Homeopathy is a safe, effective, scientific system of medicine, which assists the natural tendency of the body to heal itself. It recognises that all symptoms of ill health are expressions of disharmony within the whole person and that it is the patient who needs treatment and not just the disease, and therefore can be helpful in all cases of ill health no matter what the diagnosis.
People are becoming increasingly disillusioned with drug treatment and questioning the quality of their health care. They are searching for more natural ways to improve their health and are choosing homeopathic treatment as a safe alternative. In homeopathy they find a system of medicine that looks at each person as a unique individual and a system that shows respect for the body and its ability to keep the person in optimum health.
Homeopathic medicine is a scientific system of healing discovered in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, a physician who was disillusioned with the techniques employed by the doctors of his time. It employs the principle of ‘Like Cures Like’, also known as the Law of Similars. (The word homeopathy is derived from the Greek words meaning ‘similar suffering’.) Homeopathy treats illness with a substance which, when taken by a healthy person, produces symptoms similar to those experienced by the person who is ill.
Although homeopathy has its roots in ancient Greek medicine and in the work of the 16th-century physician Paracelsus, modern homeopathic treatment dates back 200 years to the work of the German doctor and chemist Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann qualified as an orthodox physician but ceased to practise as a doctor because of what he saw as the barbaric medical practices of his day - which included bloodletting and the overuse of toxic medicines, leading to horrific side effects.
A brilliant linguist, he earned a living from translating books and was interested by a reference in a medical textbook to the use of China (cinchona or Peruvian bark) as a cure for malaria. Intrigued to know why China worked, he took doses of the remedy until he himself began to exhibit malarial symptoms. He stopped taking the China and the symptoms went away. From this he deduced that the ancient principle of 'like cures like' actually worked.
His next step was to see if there were safe levels at which toxic substances could be given - and still cure the type of symptoms that they might otherwise cause. His experiments with dilution led him to discover that the more a substance was diluted, the more potent it appeared to become.
Homeopathic medicine was born, but in practising it, Hahnemann and his followers were subjected to ridicule and persecution by the medical establishment, despite the fact that they were seeing patients getting better on tiny doses of medcines, prescribed on the basis of 'like cures like'. Many European practitioners emigrated to the United States, where homeopathy flourished in the 19th century – until the medical establishment there systematically acted to remove its influence.
Hahnemann ended his days as a renowned and very busy practitioner in Paris, working into his eighties and seeing a continuous queue of patients. On his death, he was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery, where there is a large monument (photograph below) to him and to his discovery of homeopathy.
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