Historical context
In the 16th century the pioneer of chemical medicine Paracelsus declared that small doses of “what makes a man ill also cures him", anticipating homeopathy, but it was Hahnemann who gave it a name and laid out its principles in the late 18th century.
At that time, mainstream medicine employed such measures as bloodletting and purging, used laxatives and enemas, and administered complex mixtures, such as Venice treacle, which was made from 64 substances including opium, myrrh, and viper's flesh. Such measures often worsened symptoms and sometimes proved fatal.
Hahnemann rejected such methods as irrational and inadvisable.
Instead, he favored the use of single drugs at lower doses and promoted an immaterial, vitalistic view of how living organisms function, believing that diseases have spiritual, as well as physical causes.
(At the time, vitalism was part of mainstream science. In the 20th century, however, medicine discarded vitalism, with the development of microbiology, the germ theory of disease, and advances in chemistry.)
Hahnemann also advocated various lifestyle improvements to his patients, including exercise, diet, and cleanliness.
Hahnemann's concept
Hahnemann conceived of homeopathy while translating a medical treatise by Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen into German.
Upon ingesting the bark, he noticed few stomach symptoms, but did experience fever, shivering and joint pain, symptoms similar to some of the early symptoms of malaria, the disease that the bark was ordinarily used to treat.
From this, Hahnemann came to believe that all effective drugs produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the diseases that they treat.
This later became known as the "law of similars", the most important concept of homeopathy. The term "homeopathy" was coined by Hahnemann and first appeared in print in 1807, although he began outlining his theories of "medical similars" or the "doctrine of specifics" in a series of articles and monographs in 1796.
Hahnemann began to test what effects substances produced in humans, a procedure which would later become known as "homeopathic proving".
These time-consuming tests required subjects to clearly record all of their symptoms as well as the ancillary conditions under which they appeared.
Hahnemann saw these data as a way of identifying substances suitable for the treatment of particular diseases.
Hahnemann believed that large doses of drugs that caused similar symptoms would only aggravate illness, so he advocated extreme dilutions of the substances; he devised a technique for making dilutions that he believed would preserve a substance's therapeutic properties while removing its harmful effects,
He gathered and published a complete overview of his new medical system in his 1810 book, ''The Organon of the Healing Art'', whose 6th edition, published in 1921, is still used by homeopaths today.
By 1900, there were 22 homeopathic colleges and 15,000 practitioners in the United States.
Homeopathic remedies, even if ineffective, would almost surely cause no harm, making the users of homeopathic remedies less likely to be killed by the treatment that was supposed to be helping them.
One reason for the growing popularity of homeopathy was its apparent success in treating people suffering from infectious disease epidemics.
During 19th century epidemics of diseases such as cholera, death rates in homeopathic hospitals were often lower than in conventional hospitals, where the treatments used at the time were often harmful and did little or nothing to combat the diseases.
From its inception, however, homeopathy was criticized by mainstream science. Sir John Forbes, physician to Queen Victoria, said in 1843 that the extremely small doses of homeopathy were regularly derided as useless, "an outrage to human reason". James Young Simpson said in 1853 of the highly diluted drugs: "No poison, however strong or powerful, the billionth or decillionth of which would in the least degree affect a man or harm a fly."
19th century American physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes was also a vocal critic of homeopathy and published an essay in 1842 entitled ''Homœopathy, and its kindred delusions''.
The members of the French Homeopathic Society observed in 1867 that some of the leading homeopathists of Europe were not only abandoning the practice of administering infinitesimal doses, but were also no longer defending it.
The last school in the U.S. exclusively teaching homeopathy closed in 1920. However, in the mid to late 1970s, homeopathy made a significant comeback and sales of some homeopathic companies increased tenfold.
Greek homeopath George Vithoulkas performed a "great deal of research to update the scenarios and refine the theories and practice of homeopathy" beginning in the 1970s, and it was revived worldwide; in Brazil during the 1970s and in Germany during the 1980s.
The medical profession started to integrate such ideas in the 1990s and mainstream pharmacy chains recognized the business potential of selling homeopathic remedies.
Further Reading
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