Homeopathy was discovered more than 200 years ago by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843). Soon after he began his medical practice in 1780, he became disillusioned with the medical procedures of the time and with the negligible effectiveness of the treatments. In 1790, while translating Dr. Cullen’s Treatise on the Materia Medica, he was struck by a passage about quinine, isolated from cinchona bark, which Dr. Cullen used against malaria. Hahnemann began taking various doses of quinine himself, carefully recording the results — and so the historically first proving came about.
After six years of experiments and trials he discovered that what a substance provokes in a healthy person, it cures in a sick one. He named his new system “homeopathy” — from the Greek words “homoios” = similar and “pathos” = suffering. In 1810 he described his principles in detail in the Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, and two years later he began teaching homeopathy at the University of Leipzig.
From the very first days homeopathy had opponents among conventional physicians (Hahnemann always sharply criticised outdated treatments that brought patients more suffering than the illness itself) and among pharmacists (he always used only a single remedy instead of expensive – and highly lucrative – mixtures of various substances). At the same time, from the outset it also enjoyed great popularity among patients (fast, lasting and gentle treatment) and among progressive doctors whose first concern was to help the sick.
During the 19th century homeopathy spread rapidly throughout Europe, Asia and both Americas. Among the most important physicians in the USA were Dr. Constantine Hering (1800–1880), whose laws of cure are still valid today, and Dr. James Tyler Kent (1849–1916), whose materia medica lectures are a fundamental book for all homeopaths and whose repertory is the backbone of today’s repertories. In 1849 Dr. Frederick Quin (1799–1878) founded the first homeopathic hospital in London. When a cholera epidemic broke out in 1859, the mortality rate in this hospital was more than half lower than in other hospitals. However, the national medical board did not publish this information, on the grounds that “these statistics would sanction the use of methods that are contrary to true knowledge and to the progress of medical science.”
At the beginning of the 20th century homeopathy was pushed aside by the rise of the American Medical Association in the USA and the British Medical Association in the United Kingdom. At the end of the 20th century, however, interest in homeopathic treatment revived, as some aspects of conventional medicine had led to disillusionment.