What is homeopathy?
Who was Samuel Hahnemann?
In 1790, after practising medicine for 11 years this German doctor became increasingly disillusioned with the medical practices of his day, finding them barbaric and using all manner of toxic ingredients. He decided to close his surgery and imbarked on researching previous papers of other doctors. On doing this Hahnemann became interested in one particular piece of work on cinchona bark which had recently been introduced as a medicine for treating fevers and malaria. His sceptism about this claim lead him to personally test the cinchona whilst he was completely healthy. He discovered by taking the plant it caused him to present with symptoms identical to malaria, and believed that from this experiment he had found proof of the ancient principle- like cures like.
The law of similars
Hahnemann spent the next 30 years cultivating and studying his theory. During this time he discovered that if normally toxic substances were diluted some many times, to the point that they were no longer toxic, they actually had a powerful healing effect on individuals. He named his new medicine homeopathy, which comes from the greek words: homoios (similar) pathos (suffering), perhaps better known today as treating like with like.
The medicines are prepared from natural substances such as plants and minerals, which are then diluted many times. This results in the original substance being “potentised”, which renders it totally harmless, non-toxic, and non addictive leaving only its curative properties.