Over 2000 years ago Hippocrates, dubbed "the father of medicine", identified two types of medicine, contraries and similars. Contraries, antipathy
in Greek, use the opposite suffering to restore well-being. (Example: a
laxative eases constipation.) Hippocrates noted that contraries, over time, make the original problem
worse, then more medicine is needed. Most people who’ve taken antacids
or sleeping pills would agree. Hippocrates favored the use of similars,
which already had a long and successful history in traditional, herbal
medicine, and was utilized by many cultures, including the Mayans,
Chinese, Greeks, Native American Indians, and Asian Indians, but it was
Samuel Hahnemann who codified the law of similars into a systematic medical
science.
Over 200 years ago, a German doctor named
Samuel Hahnemann noted quinine protected people against malaria. He
took some himself and found that he got all the symptoms of malaria. It
cured malaria because it could produce malaria-like symptoms in a
healthy person. Hahnemann was thrilled by this revelation and spent his
life testing diluted substances on volunteers, carefully recording their
effects. This work continues today with thousands of substances already
tested and new ones being introduced all the time.
Now
known as the 'Father of Homeopathy', Samuel Hahnemann believed that the
highest purpose of medicine was "to restore health rapidly, gently,
permanently; to remove and destroy the whole disease in the shortest,
most reliable, most harmless way".
In acute applications,
homeopathy has saved millions of lives during epidemics, most
notably the historic flu pandemic of 1918-1919. While the old-school
physicians had a 30-60% mortality rate among their patients, homeopaths
had less than a 3% loss.
With
the advent of penicillin and other drugs, the western world began to
turn away from homeopathy, and the pharmaceutical and medical
establishments have worked hard to dissuade the public from utilizing it
since the 1920's. Today, as antibiotics are proving
ineffective against many of the bacteria they once "cured" and other
drugs are creating debilitating side-effects, people are
enthusiastically returning to homeopathy's safe, gentle and thorough
method of restoring health.
