How Did Homeopathy Start to Be

Homeopathy has since been considered fraud with not enough scientific evidence to prove its effectiveness yet a lot of people live as witnesses to its positive outcome. This is the reason why despite the number of trials and issues thrown at it, homeopathy continues to gather more and more followers. Not only is it popular in developed countries where it has been developed and introduced but even eastern countries which practically adapt the trends of the westerners. Homeopathic clinics are even built alongside hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Jakarta, Indonesia and Seoul, South Korea. 

Homeopathy believes in tradition practice of using different products of nature for its health benefits, diluting it for its nutrients.  We know that Samuel Hahnemann, a German physicist was the founder of homeopathic treatments. Whatever drove Hahnemann to create one of the most popular medical treatments in history baffled a lot of experts and researchers. It is, however, a subject of many fascinating historical accounts which the Peterson Group will also try and attempt on a short review of our own. 

It was not until 1789 when Samuel Hahnemann first conceived homeopathic method when he was translating the “A Treatise of Materia Medica” by Dr. William Cullen. He decided to experiment on himself with one of the drugs mentioned in that work, Cinchona or Peruvian bark (from which quinine is derived). He noticed that when a healthy person took doses of this drug it produced many symptoms which the drug was intended to cure in a sick person. His footnotes to his translation indicate that this was the beginning of his articulation of what would become one of the greatest and most controversial healing methods ever known. From the very beginning of this new practice Hahnemann was dogged by two phenomena that would follow him the rest of his life – his increasing fame as a physician who was able to achieve remarkable cures and the ire of envious physicians and pharmacists since Hahnemann maintained that a physician must not only dispense his own medicines but prepare them as well. 

His fluency in 8 languages also enabled him to influence a lot of people. With his project complete in 1796, he published an article in the Journal of Practical Medicine where he described three healing methods:

1.     Preventive treatment which is the removal of the causes of illness before it happens

2.     Palliative treatment which in theory is treating the illness with an opposing treatment; and

3.     Preferred treatment where illnesses are being treated based on its symptoms and given the exact cures it needs.