Homeopathy is a system of alternative medicine. It was created in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. He graduated MD at the University of Erlangen on 10 August 1779, qualifying with honors.
Hahnemann was dissatisfied with the state of medicine in his time and particularly objected to practices such as bloodletting. He claimed that the medicine he had been taught to practice sometimes did the patient more harm than good.
After giving up his practice around 1784, Hahnemann made his living chiefly as a writer and translator. While translating William Cullen's( A Treatise on the Materia Medica) Hahnemann encountered the claim that cinchona, the bark of a Peruvian tree, was effective in treating malaria because of its astringency.
He began to research cinchona's effect on the human body by self-application. Noting that the drug induced malaria-like symptoms in himself, he concluded that it would do so in any healthy individual. This led him to suggest a healing principle,that which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms.This principle,"like cures like" , became the basis for an approach to medicine which he gave the name homeopathy. Homeopathic preparations are termed "remedies" and are made using homeopathic dilution by the process of potentization.
Potentization decreases the quantity of medicine and increases the quality of medicine, thus making it safe to use having no side effects.
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