Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, father of Homoeopathy was one among a few of his time to step into the portals of a university and graduate in medicine with an MD. It was the pre-antibiotic era
and consisted of many barbaric practices. Conventional doctors routinely used bleeding and excessive purging to treat diseases on presumption that he disease was caused due to bad blood within the body.Dr. Hahnemann was disappointed with this and therefore gave up his medical practice.
He dreamed and pondered over a new idea making medicine safe, effective sane, humane and gentle.
To support himself Hahnemann started translating medical book in different languages, as he knew over a dozen language. when he was once engaged in the translation of William Cullen’s classical work, lectures on Materia Media, in 1790. Cullen’s statement that chinchona (Quinie) bark possessed specific febrifugal (fever-relieving) properties. because it was one of the most aromatic and bitter substance known aroused his scientific min and curiosity.
Hahnemann felt that there were many more substances, not just barks, with extremely bitter and fragnant properties, none of them had strength to cure the fevers, especially malaria-like fevers. He was eager to test the idea. He drank the Decoction of chinchona bark to test the results. He developed a malarial fever with chills. This laid foundation to homoeopathy. Hahnemann then expounded his principle : like cures like.
From this experiment. Dr. Hahnemann derived a hypothesis “A Substance which can artifically produce certain disease like symptoms on a healthy person; only that substance can cure a similar disease when it is given to the patient in the form of Homoeopathic medicine.
For Example: when you chop onions, you have watery eyes and a running nose, you sneeze and cough, and all these happens due to the exposure to the tubers active substances. the Homoeopathic remedy, Allium cepa,made from red onion, can help you overcome cold or allergy attack in which you have similar symptoms-water eyes, running nose, sneezing cough or throat irritation.
Dr. Hahnemann started studying the effects of various substances on humans, and systemically record the symptoms produced by these substances. These records were then used as a reference guide to select a similar remedy for his patients. Cure achieved in this way further confirmed his hypothesis about the concept of ‘like cures like’. Dr. Hahnemann thus evolved homoeopathy as a scientific system of alternative medicine based on his research and clinical experience of over 12years.
Homoeopathy become widely popular during the 19th century with its success in treating patients during epidemics like Cholera. Death rates in homoeopathic hospitals were lower that conventional hospitals.