Week 1 Lesson 2 – History

History Of Homeopathy

Presented by Kate Kitness

Acute Homeopathy Course-start

History Of Homeopathy

History of Homeopathy

The idea behind Homeopathy was first thought of in 5th century BC by Hippocrates, on the island of Kos. He opened the world’s first hospital on the island. He came up with the idea that like cures like. A patient may be treated by something that would cause those symptoms in a healthy person. Eg Belladonna and  Arsenicum. If a healthy person takes arsenicum, they will be poisoned. If taken in the homeopathic form, they will have their stomach symptoms soothed and they will become less agitated.

It all went a bit quiet during the dark ages, then in 1755 Samuel Hahnemann was born in Germany. He advocated better public hygiene, sensible eating, fresh air and exercise. He did experiments with Cinchona bark, and gave himself the symptoms of malaria; every time he took a dose, the symptoms came back. So, he tried this on all his friends and got similar results this was the first “proving” of a remedy. He then tried Belladonna and Arsenicum.

He started to build up a symptom picture for all of his remedies – this is the start of the Materia medica. He christened Homeopathy Homeo – similar & pathos – suffering. For each sick patient, he would take many details of their symptoms and their state of mind, these were the first case takes that take us up to 90 minutes to do today.

Next, Hahnemann developed the series of dilutions and succussions (tapping) by which all remedies are made. In this way, the energy of the medicine is transferred to the water particles. So, each remedy has a specific vibrational frequency, which triggers the body to heal.

In 1900 there were 22 Homeopathic Colleges in America, so there were a large number of practising homeopaths. During the 1900s pharmaceutical companies started to protest against homeopathy, because it was a cheap and simple way to ease patients symptoms. The battle still goes on today.