Homeopathy
There are different kinds of medicine systems in the world such as Allopathy, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Unani, Issopathy etc. Each system has its own specialty, usefulness and limitations.
The word Homeopathy has German origin. Homeo means similar and Pathy means suffering so it means similar suffering. Basic principle of homeopathy is “like cures like” i.e. Similia Similibus Curentur.
Homeopathy was found in Germany in the year 1790. The founder, Dr. Samuel Hahneman was an M.D. in Allopathy. During his initial practice of allopathic medicine, Dr. Hahneman experienced that most of the patients were coming back with the same complaints. This disturbed him as he expected the treatment to cure the disease in permanent manner.
Along with the medical practice he was also working as English to German language translator. During that job he came across one article which stated that “if the juice of cinconabark—quinine is given to a normal healthy person he/she will develop symptoms of malarial fever.” He could not accept this fact and hence decided to prove the phenomena himself. He started the experiment of taking cinconabark—quinine juice himself and sure enough developed the symptoms of malarial fever. Upon discontinuation of the juice consumption, the symptoms would disappear. This confirmed the law of Similia Similibus Curentur in his mind. The cinconabark proved to be as valuable to him as the fallen apple was to Newton.
Officially he presented the article of cinconabark in “Hufelands Journal” in 1970. After him, several other doctors did research on the principle of homeopathy “like cures like” and found more than 2500 medicines. Born in West Germany, homeopathy spread across the world over the years.