Homeopathy was founded in the late 1700’s by a medical doctor named Samuel Hahnemann. Disappointed in medicine at the time, he gave up his practice and became a medical translator. He was fluent in 7 languages. In his studies as translator, he became curious about a certain a South American bark, Chincona (from which quinine was later made) that could cure malaria but also caused the same symptoms when taken in quantity by a healthy person. He then took an extract from the bark and experimented on himself…taking successive doses of the medicine until he developed symptoms – (chills, weakness, and sweats – similar to malaria). From this discovery and further experiments, he discovered the ‘Law of Similars’. Hahnemann was aware that Hippocrates, 460 bc to 370 bc, the father of modern medicine (Hippocratic Oath), had referred to two ways to cure, similars and opposites. Opposites is what we now know of as western, conventional medicine ( i.e. ANTI-biotics). But it was Hahnemann who fleshed out and proved Hippocrates’ theory regarding similars. He began to dilute and energize each substance to a high level in order to stimulate healing without causing too strong a reaction. Since Hahnemann’s time, nearly 3000 remedies have been created from tests called ‘provings’. The proving process is one of giving a remedy to a group of healthy people to see what symptoms it can create. These are double blind placebo controlled studies. What symptoms the substance can create are also the symptoms it can cure (the Law of Similars). Hahnemann proved over 100 remedies on himself….living an extremely vital life until he was 88 (life expectancy was in the 40s at that time). In the late 1800’s there were more than 20 Homeopathic medical schools in America. Homeopathy stood along side conventional medicine and was equally accredited and accepted. In fact, three of the main medical schools in America, started out as Homeopathic medical schools: New York Medical School, Boston University School of Medicine, and Univ. of Michigan Medical School at Ann Arbor. A statue of Samuel Hahnemann (the founder of Homeopathy) stands on the grounds of the White House in view of the president’s window. In WW1 there was a homeopathic medical corp. But homeopathy slowly lost its footing in the last century, so as to almost disappear in the US until recently.
So what happened?
When the AMA was formed in the mid 1850s they aggressively squelched Homeopathy because they felt threatened by Homeopathy’s therapeutic successes and also because Homeopathic ranks were filled with MD’s who were abandoning conventional medicine for homeopathy. The AMA was so serious about this that MD’s lost their licenses for consulting with homeopaths. One of these was consulting with his wife, who was a homeopath. Because Homeopathy requires individualized treatment, each remedy selection tailored to the unique symptomatic profile of each patient, a physician could not just say “take this for that condition”. So, though homeopathy was more effective, it was also a more arduous process and less financially profitable. The source for homeopathic medicines are simple and natural so not patentable….so… no money to be made there (consider the money made in prescription meds now). And since it is preventative medicine, if people did not deteriorate with chronic disease, there would be less money to make. Homeopathy is beginning to return as a popular alternative to expensive conventional options. Because it is preventative medicine, promotes cure, and is relatively inexpensive, it is clearly one major option to the country’s health care crisis
About Homoeopathy
Homeopathy is the system of medicine which works on the principle of “like cure likes” (Similia Similibus Curantar). This system of holistic healing is founded by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician. He experienced the symptoms of Malariaby repeatedly taking the Cinchona medicine and after continuing his experiments found that those medicines which cause disease-like symptoms in healthy individuals are capable of curing the diseased individuals.
The German physician and founder of homoeopathy Samuel Hahnemann was born at Meissen in Saxony on the 10th of April 1755. He was educated at the “elector’s school” of Meissen, and studied medicine at Leipzig and Vienna, taking the degree of M.D. at Erlangen in 1779. After practicing in various places, he settled in Dresden in 1784, and thence removed to Leipzig in 1789. In the following year, while translating W. Cullen’s Materia Medica into German, he was struck by the fact that the symptoms produced by quinine on the healthy body were similar to those of the disordered states it was used to cure. He had previously felt dissatisfied with the state of the science of medicine, and this observation led him to assert the truth of the “law of similars”, similia similibus curantur, that diseases are cured (or should be treated) by those drugs which produce symptoms similar to them in the healthy.
He promulgated his new principle in a paper published in 1796 in C. W. Hufeland’s Journal, and four years later, convinced that drugs in much smaller doses than were generally employed effectually exerted their curative powers, he advanced his doctrine of their potentization or dynamization. In 1810 he published his chief work, Organon der rationellen Heilkunde, containing an exposition of his system, which he called homoeopathy, and in the following years appeared the six volumes of his Reine Arzneimittellehre, which detailed the symptoms produced by “proving” a large number of drugs, i.e. by systematically administering them to healthy subjects.
In 1821 the hostility of established interests, and especially of the apothecaries, whose services were not required under his system, forced him to leave Leipzig, and at the invitation of the grand-duke of Anhalt-Cothen he went to live at Cothen. Fourteen years later he removed to Paris, where he practiced with great success until his death on the 2nd of July 1843. Statues were erected to his memory at Leipzig in 1851 and at Cothen in 1855. He also wrote, in addition to the works already mentioned, Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis (1805) and Die chronischen Krankheiten (1828-30.) Needless to say, the basis of Hahnamann’s homeopathic approach to medicine is entirely fraudulent, though it is still practiced today.