Homeopathy is based on the Principle of Similars' or let likes cure likes'.
- Homeopathy is based on the Principle of Similars' or let likes cure likes'.
- The term "homeopathy" was coined by the German physician Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann in 1807.
- Hahnemann believed symptoms induced by a given homeopathic remedy in a group of healthy individuals will cure a similar set of symptoms in the sick.
- Symptoms and remedies are determined by "provings", in which healthy volunteers are given remedies, often in miniscule doses, and the resulting physical, mental and spiritual symptoms observed.
- Hahnemann first tested substances commonly used as medicines in his time, such as Antimony and Rhubarb, and also poisons such as Arsenic, Mercury and Belladonna.
- He recorded his first provings of 27 drugs in the Fragmenta de viribus in 1805 and later in his Materia Medica Pura.
- Homeopathic practitioners today tend to rely on the Homeopathic "Materia Medicae", comprising alphabetical indexes of "Drug Pictures" organised by remedy and describe the symptoms associated with individual remedies.
- Today, around 3000 remedies are used in homeopathy; about 300 are based on comprehensive Materia Medica information, around 1500 on relatively fragmentary knowledge and the rest are used experimentally in difficult cases.
- Homeopathy uses many animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic substances. Examples include Natrum muriaticum (table salt), Lachesis muta (the venom of the bushmaster snake), Opium, and Thyroidinum (thyroid hormone).
