The Canadian government’s system of approving homeopathic treatments has been challenged after a naturopath in the province of British Columbia claimed to have treated a four-year-old’s behavioural problems with a remedy made from the saliva of a rabid dog.

Anke Zimmerman said she had used the product to treat a preschooler named Jonah who had been having trouble sleeping and had been aggressive and violent towards his peers. “His school is complaining that he hides under tables and growls at people,” she wrote on her blog.

She suspected the child’s issues stemmed from a previous dog bite. “This child presented a perfect picture of the rabies state,” she wrote.

Drawing on her more than two decades of experience, she gave him two pellets of lyssinum, which claimed to contain the infected saliva, made by a pharmacy in the UK and which is approved by Health Canada.

“Within a minute or two of giving him the remedy Jonah smiled at me very broadly and beautifully, as if all the lights had just gone on,” Zimmerman wrote. His mother later reported considerable improvements, she added.

Her claim has prompted questions about why the treatment – known as lyssin, lyssinum or hydrophobinum – was approved for use in Canada.

This week, the top health official in British Columbia, Dr Bonnie Henry, urged Health Canada to review its decision, over concerns that the product could put patients at risk of contracting rabies.

“There’s no way I can understand why we would have anything that was meant to be saliva of a rabid dog approved for use in this country,” Henry told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

While she acknowledged that homeopathic remedies play a complementary role for some families in their health, she said there was no evidence to suggest that a remedy made from infected saliva had any therapeutic benefits.

The British Columbia Naturopathic Association also weighed in, saying it had filed a complaint with the province’s regulatory body. “We take no pleasure in filing a complaint against a registrant with our college, but we do so, first and foremost, in the public interest to protect our profession’s reputation and to ensure that safe, competent and ethical care is delivered to all patients,” Victor Chan of the association said in a statement.

Zimmerman later updated her blog, saying that she had taken down her original post made earlier this year after being inundated by hateful messages, including what she described as “threats of injury”.

Pointing to the dilution process used to create the homeopathic remedy, she argued the young boy had never been exposed to rabies. “After the process is repeated 12 times it is basically impossible to have even one of the original molecules left in the solution, which is ultimately often used to medicate lactose or sucrose pellets. Therefore there is no single molecule of rabies in the remedy. You can’t catch rabies from the remedy.”

The focus should instead be on the fact that a child had been successfully treated, she wrote. “I have news for you people, homeopathy either works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, what does it matter what it’s made of, dog saliva, elephant’s dung or badger’s pubic hair, it’s so diluted that it’s only water after all, or a placebo, a sugar pill.”