Homeopathy's Founder, Samuel Hahnemann and the history of Homeopathy

Homeopathy is a system of medicine, founded by Samuel Christian Hahnemann in the 17th Century. Its central tenet is similia similibus curentor or "like cures like". Hahnemann formulated this and other central concepts of Homeopathy during his lifetime and developed a system of safe,clean and effective medicine that continues to cure sickness and thrive on a global level despite opposition as old as the art itself.

Before Samuel Hahnemann founded the principles of Homeopathy in the 18th Century there were a few historical precursors that preempted homeopathy in a number of the theories they put forward.

Hippocrates, a Greek physician who lived in the 5th century BC is known as the "father of medicine". He held that there were two methods of curing disease: By "opposition" and by "similars". His insistence on ethics and observation earned him his contemporary title but with very few exceptions, the only thread that western orthodox medicine picked up from his two methods of cure was that of opposition. Hippocrates also had a strong belief in the power of the body's immune system, stating that "Our natures are the physicians of ourselves"

One of those exceptions came in the form of Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) a German physician known as "the father of toxicology". He was instrumental in moving the focus of chemistry away from alchemy, the pursuit of turning base metals into gold, towards the curing of disease and pharmacy. He said "Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines "

Like Hippocrates, Paracelsus also believed in the power of the body's own immune system. He claimed that simply by keeping a wound clean and dry would allow the body's immune system to heal it naturally. A ridiculous view to hold at the time when wounds were cauterised by boiling oil or infections were allowed to fester, resulting in the amputation of the limb

As well as preempting the germ theory of disease, he also placed great emphasis on empirical observation of the facts when it came to the symptoms of an illness. Influenced by German folk medicine, where the "like-cures-like" belief still held sway, Paracelsus held that a small dose of a poisonous substance had the potential to cure great infirmity. He said "It is the dose that makes the poison". This paved the way for Hahnemann's tenet of "the minimum dose".

Samuel Christian Hahnemann founded the science and art of Homeopathy during his lifetime in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Born on the 11th of April 1755 in Meissen, Saxony to middle class parents, he was the third of five children. Meissen was a small town of about 4,000 residents many of whom were artists and artisans. His father was a porcelain designer and painter and a devout Lutheran who had Samuel baptised on the sabbath after his birth according to the tenets of that faith. Hahnemann's father had deeply held convictions and passed onto his son a love of learning and disdain for pretension.

Hahnemann singled himself out as a scholar early in his life, excelling at the natural sciences and languages. Such was his talent that his teachers responded to his father's efforts to take him out of study by offering to school him without charge. His favourite study was medical science. By the time he left for Leipzig university he had mastered Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Botany, Physics and Mathematics. He had presented a thesis in Latin called "The Wonder of the Human Hand".

At Leipzig he continued his studies for two years but his desire to study medicine let him to Vienna where he completed his studies and was awarded his Medical degree in 1779. All the while he supported himself by working as a translator or as a librarian for a rich family. His erudition grew, not just in the area of medicine but also in ancient languages and occult sciences. His rich patron sponsored his entry into the Freemasons at this time.

During the next ten years Hahnemann married and had children, practiced medicine and then became disillusioned with it. His thirst for knowledge brought him back to Leipzig where he worked as a translator and developed new, notable and applauded techniques in metallurgy, pharmacy and chemistry.

Towards the end of this time in Leipzig, during an assignment translating Dr. Cullen's Materia Medica he took great exception to Cullen's explanations for the efficacy of Peruvian, or Chinchona Bark against Ague. Hahnemann decided to test this medicine on himself to test his theories. What he discovered was that the symptoms he developed while auto-administering Cinchona Bark were similar to that which the medicine was given to treat. He developed a kind of ague while he was taking the Cinchona. Unfortunately poverty forced Hahnemann and his family to move to a small village at this time.

For the next six years Hahnemann used his huge knowledge of the "specifics" or medicines of his day to conduct provings of many remedies still used in Homeopathy today. Through careful experimentation and observation of himself and other healthy individuals Hahnemann became more and more convinced of this emerging principle of a new medicine. It is a testament to his scientific rigour that he waited until 1796 in an essay entitled "Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs" before announcing to the world "similia similibus curenter" or "Let Like Cure Like". In subsequent essays he argues with lucidity for a new, simpler system of medicine, where one cure is administered at a time. This was during a period when apothecaries made their fortunes from dubious cocktails of substances.

Hahnemann re-entered medical practice but this time as the first practitioner of a medicine he called Homoeopathy after the Greek Homeo meaning "same" and pathos meaning "suffering". In his thriving practice he searched for each patient's similimum or the remedy whose constellation of symptoms best matched that of the patient's

In practice, Hahnemann developed his new system further, with the discovery of the principle of the minimum dose. Hahnemann discovered that by rhythmically shaking the solution in an action known as "succusion" one could "potentise" the remedy thereby making it more powerful as it became more dilute. He attracted more ridicule from the established medical community even as his practice became busier. During an outbreak of Scarlet Fever, he discovered that Belladonna acted as a prophylactic for the disease and successfully saved many lives by treating them thus. His detractors ridicule turned to envy and he was eventually driven out of Konigslutter by the passing of new laws preventing him from making and dispensing his own medicines.

By Now the main principals of Homeopathy had been established and for the rest of his life, Hahnemann wrote, published, lectured and practiced and further developed his theories. He lectured at Leipzig for years, attained successes at psychiatric treatment and demonstrated the efficacy of Homeopathy during cholera and typhoid outbreaks. In 1810 he published "The Organon of the Healing Art" which encapsulated his theories and which ran into six editions during his lifetime. He devised the concept of the Miasm to account for constitutional predisposition to disease and hereditary conditions. He also published two other key works, his Materia Medica Pura and "Chronic Diseases and their Homoeopathic Cure".

In 1834 Hahnemann married for a second time to Marie Melanie d'Hervilly a 30 year old Parisienne, many decades his junior, just four years after the death of his first wife. He returned with Melanie to Paris and remained in there, running a prosperous practice, for the rest of his life, dying in July 1843 at the age of 88 after months of pulmonary disease.

Homeopathy was spread all across Europe and to America by the time of Hahnemann's death. Constantine Hering furthered the body of Homeopathic knowledge with his Laws of cure and deepening insights into Miasms. He is also credited with creating "isopathy" when the potentised form of a disease is used to effect it's cure. Iso meaning "same" in Greek, denoting that the same is used to cure the same disease as opposed to similar. Hering also trained thousands of Homeopaths and founded a Homeopathic hospital in the States.

James Tyler Kent was another prominent early Homeopath, taking his advocacy of very high potencies and remedy "pictures" straight into the core of Homeopathic theory. His Materia Medica and Repertory were the most accessible published at the time and did much to aid the spread of the practice. Modern practitioners such as Vithoulkas and Sankaran continue this tradition, bringing the art up to date and deepening its insights into remedies and human nature.

In most parts of the contemporary world Homeopathy is now practiced with varying degrees of official tolerance. From total denial in South America to official sanction in India, where Homeopathy is to be found alongside allopathy as an equivalent alternative, fully recognised and regulated. The UK is now moving towards this with the recent full inclusion of Homeopathy on the NHS as a pilot programme in Wales.

That Homeopathy is effective has long been known to practitioners and patients alike and has been finally accepted by the orthodox medical community after the results of rigorous trials for The Lancet in 1997 and for the European Commission in 1996, although these studies make no attempt to explain why the Homeopathic remedies were found to be more effective than placebos.

Modern orthodox science is as skeptical as it has ever been with regard to Homeopathy, now as in Hahnemann's time. The reductionist paradigms of molecular biology are relentlessly applied to a medicine that is clearly based on energies. It is in quantum physics that Western science now has a theoretical framework to interrogate the nature of homeopathic remedies. It is not surprising that there is vocal detraction of Homeopathy's value given the sheer magnitude of scientific, medical and pharmaceutical vested interests potentially upset by its general acceptance. The controversy over the work of the late Jacques Benveniste, who came across proof of "the memory of water" is testament to that.

Just as it has opened up new frontiers in medicine, so will it open them up in science as physicists get to grips with the dynamics of the underlying energies involved.

Not too soon either, since the polluting effects of the pharmaceutical industry lay waste to more rivers and landscapes, even as the medicines they produce pollute the seas after passing through the bodies of patients putting hormones and radiation, amongst others, into the food chain. When the efficacy of antibiotics continues to tire and new generations of "superbugs" defeat the allopaths. The patients will vote with their feet, just as the chronic asthmatic or allergy sufferer does now, for a curative system that is deservedly popular as safe, clean and effective, bringing sustainable positive change in heath.