Homoeopathy- the new therapeutic science found by German physician Dr Samuel Hahnemann in the year 1790 which now stands as the second most popular healing art and the first one among the alternative systems of therapeutics. It is obvious by the number of patients who rely upon this system worldwide. Homoeopathy is both science and a philosophy which is bound by nature’s laws and the basic principle “Like cures likes”
The founder of Homoeopathy Dr Christian Frederick Samuel Hahnemann who was a post graduate in medicine, a multi linguist, a scholar and a teacher started practice of medicine for a certain period and quit from that by opposing some cruel method of treatments Viz, bloodletting, Leeching, Cauterization etc which were prevailed at that time. After quitting from the medical profession he continued his career as a translator of books of different languages. While doing so he happened to see a book of materia medica written by Dr William Cullen. In that book it was mentioned that the medicine Quina (Cinchona bark) cures malaria due the bitter principle. Hahnemann was not ready to accept Dr Cullen’s version and thought why other bitter substances or medicine not curing malaria. He himself swallowed Quina a considerable quantity which produced an illness similar to malaria. It was quite startling to him and the same experiment he made with his friends and relatives and almost all of them produced an illness similar to malaria.
The above experiment was considered as the first drug proving of Homoeopathy and the birth of Homoeopathy. Dr Hahnemann then started experiments with many medicines in repeated doses at many people of different categories and came to the conclusion as a medicine or substance which produces disease in a healthy human being has the ability to cure the illness of a similar nature. He then defined Homoeopathy as Homoeo which means similar and pathos means suffering