Who Invented Homeopathy?

Homeopathy is an energetic medicine, using natural substances in a highly diluted form, which stimulate a healing reaction in the body. And yes, it's very safe for your animals!

I’ve previously written about the beginnings of homeopathy; but I want to go into more detail about the life of the man who had a vision for a new medicine and how he was able to rise to the calling.

I have used homeopathy for most of my 42 years in veterinary practice with results that amaze me every day. Let me explain…

Homeopathy is an energetic form of medicine. This makes it very different from pharmaceutical or herbal medicines, which are based on physical substances.

Homeopathic medicines are made from plant, mineral, or animal products. They are prepared in FDA regulated pharmacies, and formulated using a process of dilution and dynamization (aka potentization). These subtle but powerful energetic procedures link homeopathic medicines more to quantum physics and the emerging field of nano-pharmacology than to the mass production of chemical pharmacy.

So now let’s focus on the man who did the most to bring this elegant medicine into full birth; and our journey begins in late-1700’s Germany.

A very disturbed physician

If you were an aristocratic royal living in Germany 200 years ago, you might have had Dr. Samuel Hahnemann as your physician and chemist. It was the wealthy who had the medical libraries, and doctors used those books to help patients heal. The poor folk had no official doctors; but instead went to herbalists and barber/surgeons.

Dr. Hahnemann was highly respected for his treatments. His skills in the preparation of chemical formulas were very precise. Doctors of his time had to make their own medicines — no Big Pharma to do all the lab work! But the good doctor grew more and more disgruntled by the crude and barbaric treatments common to his time. Many of those practices included letting blood until the patient fainted, giving oral doses of mercury until the patient’s teeth fell out or they went mad, drilling holes in the cranium (trephining) to allow the ‘bad spirits’ of mental disorders to escape, and blistering the skin with resins applied to sticks and implanted under the skin. Far too many of these treatments either seriously weakened or even killed the patient.

This was not acceptable to Dr. Hahnemann, to say the least. He couldn’t condone or perform these standard practices any longer; so he did what any fed-up, passionate person would do — he decided to leave a lucrative medical practice with 11 children to feed! Some would say he was insane. And you can only imagine what his wife had to say the day he came home with the “honey, I’m quitting my job” news!

But really, he had no other choice, since he was unwilling to return to a medical system he knew was harming more than helping. Fluent in seven languages, he took a job translating medical texts. How he actually performed this job gives new meaning to the phrase: “working remote from home.” You can imagine him, as it’s described, sitting in a far corner of his family’s small one-room home reading medical books by candlelight. Remember: he had walked away from a super lucrative job working for royals.

In his reading he kept coming across references to the idea of ‘like cures like’, and filed that concept away in his mind. These references dated all the way back centuries, to Hippocrates and Paracelsus — brilliant doctors of their time.

Kindred spirits

As he began to entertain ideas that challenged the allopathic model — i.e.,employing drugs that have effects opposite to the symptoms — he found that many other physicians were also looking for less poisonous and deadly alternatives. Working together, these physician-chemist-pharmacists began to test a wide variety of plant, mineral, and animal preparations on themselves. This method of testing and documenting their own personal reactions is what we now call: ‘homeopathic proving’. Their courage in doing this, their skills at perceiving the most subtle reactions, and the fine detail in their documentation is nothing short of amazing!

In my opinion, these physicians were amongst the most ethical of all medical researchers, because they courageously tested their medicines on themselves rather than on animals.

BTW, Hahnemann coined the term ‘homeopathy’ from the Greek term homoios, meaning: ‘similar’; and from pathos, meaning: ‘suffering’. In other words: the medicine is in some way similar to the disease. He also coined the term ‘allopathy’ to describe our current Western medical model. Allo means ‘opposite’. So allopathic medicines are the opposite of the symptoms.

The minimum dose

In exploring this radically new approach to healing, Hahnemann tried significantly reducing the strength or volume of the preparations he was using in his treatments. The doctors of his time, like today, were using massive doses of herbs, metals, etc. The result of this reduction in dosing was patient improvements with fewer toxic reactions. He and his colleagues experimented and diluted the preparations even further, then shook and pounded the bottles, and found that their patients benefitted even more! So quite by accident, the process of preparing homeopathic remedies was born.

There are accounts of nurses in pediatric wards who were astonished at the improved results when small-drop doses of medicines were given. The children recovered much quicker; and the nurses vehemently complained when the doctors didn’t use those diluted medicines.

Then without anything resembling a word processor or computer, these medical pioneers began the tedious process of gathering information garnered from the provings, and from the responses to the drop-doses. These medical texts — called ‘materia medicas’ — hold the most extensive and crucial information available for any person desiring to use homeopathics. We modern homeopaths employ these books and the computer programs based on them every single day!

A simple question from a critical mind

During his early years of questioning and experimenting, Dr. Hahnemann was reading an article by a Scottish physician, Dr. William Cullen — another famous doctor. He was discussing how quinine extracted from the Cinchona bark cured malaria because it was bitter. Cinchona trees are plants native to South America, and called ‘quina-quina’ by the Quechua people, meaning: holy bark. Malaria is a common disease in South America, as it is in many places around the world, and is now showing up here in our more humid states. Some are connecting the use of GMO mosquitos being released for other purposes to the rise of malaria. But, I digress…

Dr. Hahnemann didn’t agree with his Scottish colleague. He thought if the hypothesis of the bitterness being the cure of malaria, then anything bitter could cure malaria — which was clearly not true. A simple question came to his mind: why is Cinchona such a specific and powerful cure for malaria? Quinine is the active ingredient in Cinchona bark. It’s now synthesized in labs, and is the primary cure used for malaria all over the world.

As his story goes, he decided to experiment on himself. He ate small pieces of the bark, and gradually increased the amounts. As he did this he began to feel poorly, and to show symptoms of malaria: fever, headache, chills, muscle aches/pains, vomiting, and diarrhea. All symptoms receded when he stopped eating the bark. He experimented again, fully documenting his symptoms, and once again the symptoms disappeared when he stopped eating the bark. This was the first ‘proving’ of a substance that would later become the standard of practice for adding medicines to the materia medica. After his personal proving of the bark he enlisted other doctors to do the same; and carefully compiled all the information.

A simple answer from a critical mind!

Are you still with me as travel back through time and imagine this man opening up his mind and heart to new ideas? As a trained medical person, I’m in absolute awe of his dedication and love for his medical art and for the people he was able to help.

So if he eliminated the possibility of bitter substances curing malaria, then why did Cinchona bark work? Then he remembered the medical translations and the references to ‘like curing like’. He surmised that Cinchona cured malaria because in it’s raw, toxic doses could cause malaria; and he ‘proved’ it repeatedly. Then he concluded that any substance that could cause symptoms could then cure those symptoms. That was the first huge leap for Hahnemann’s homeopathy.

A compassionate man

From the days of the disgruntled physician drop-out, to a now-excited and passionate doctor with a drive to help heal, Hahnemann was a rebel with a cause.

It was my mentor and homeopathic teacher, Dr. Richard Pitcairn, who showed me the fertile ground from which homeopathy sprang: compassion. I’m not sure if you can say that about many other medical models. But when reading about his life, it’s clear that Dr. Hahnemann’s driving force was the compassion he held in his heart for his patients. He is considered the Father of Modern Medicine because he took us out of the cruel practices of the time. Unfortunately, he is rarely given credit for this.

Thank you so much for reading this blog. I hope you’ve enjoyed going back in time to look at the life of this ‘doctor without mental borders’ who has been an inspiration for me, and a ‘true north’ in my own medical practice.