I was first introduced to homeopathy a few years ago when a friend invited me to join a women’s weekly study group. We used Joette Calabrese’s “Gateway to Homeopathy” as our text. I’ve studied intermittently since that time, as the wealth of information is extensive.
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) was a conventional medical doctor who treated royalty in Germany. In the day when leeches, mercury, and bloodletting were included in the medical “standard of care”, Hahnemann became disappointed with poor results that were experienced by his patients. Frequently the treatment, rather than the disease, killed the patient.
Hahnemann left his medical practice and discovered a natural law which he called “The Law of Similiars”. This became the foundation of Homeopathy and states that any substance that can cause sickness in a healthy person can cure a sick person. Similar theory was introduced in the fourth century BC when Hippocrates wrote “Through the like, disease is produced, and through the application of the like, it is cured”.
Hahnemann published his first homeopathic article in 1796 and he began teaching homeopathic principles at the University of Leipzig in Germany. He treated people with small doses of natural substances and experienced amazing results. In 1813 the city of Leipzig, Germany was hit hard with typhus. Allopathic physicians (conventional medicine) were only able to save 20-30% of the patients they treated, but Samuel Hahnemann saved 98% of those that he treated homeopathically.
Samuel Hahnemann continued to study, experiment, and to record his findings. His book, “Organon of Homeopathic Medicine, The Classic Guide Book for Understanding Homeopathy-the Fifth and Sixth edition texted, with Notes” is a soft bound book of 164 pages. From the translator’s preface, (Dr Hahnemann writes) “ I am at work on the sixth edition of the Organon, to which I devote several hours on Sundays and Thursdays, all the other times being required for treatment of patients who come to my rooms.”
The translator writes “In his eighty-sixth year, while in active practice in Paris, he completed the thorough revision of it by carefully going over paragraph by paragraph, making changes , erasures, annotations, and additions.”
Homeopathy was a very prominent treatment for most ailments during the 18th and 19th centuries. Research of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 shows that the homeopathically treated patients fared much better than those treated conventionally.
In the early 20th century, most homeopathic hospitals and schools were closed in favor of allopathic medicine. Fortunately for us, a few homeopaths have preserved the art and science of Homeopathy and it is making a comeback, mostly by word of mouth and mothers teaching other mothers. There are about 6000 Homeopathic medicines in the Materia Medica. In conventional medicine, everyone takes one drug for the same complaint, but in Homeopathy a hundred people with the same complaint will likely take something different as compared to the others, dependent upon their symptoms.
Homeopathy was tested on volunteers (no animal testing) over the years. It stresses the minimum dose and overall is quite inexpensive. It is made from natural substances, so it cannot be patented. It is safe and effective with the young, the old and everyone in between. It is effective on animals.
Homeopathy is health care. It is a complete system of medicine used by nearly 250,000 physicians and 500 million people worldwide. The medicines are non-toxic, inherently safe, and a federally recognized category of drugs in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. They are regulated by the FDA and subject to the provisions of the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (HPUS) through which they are evaluated for safety and efficacy. (homeopathychoice.org).
I have met several people who describe illness or afflictions that cannot or have not been remedied by conventional medical care, and who have turned to Homeopathy to find a complete cure of the problem. “Provings” done by homeopaths in the early 1800’s are still used by homeopaths today. The actual medicines or remedies will last for decades if not centuries.
—sources include the Organon of Homeopathic Medicine as referenced above, JoetteCalabrese.com, the Flexner Report of 1910, and general informational references.