Homoeopathy was founded by Dr. Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann who was born in Saxony in 1755 AD. He loved to learn languages and in fact attained proficiency in eight of them. At the age of 12, he had started teaching Greek. Thus, he became a language teacher at a very young age. He began his medical studies in Leipzig, Austria, and then he went to Vienna and Erlangen. In 1779, he became a medical doctor and started practicing in Dresden. He was a kind-hearted doctor and his income was obviously not much, so he started translating books into other languages in order to supplement it.
After eleven years of medical practice, he discovered the homoeopathic system of treatment. For the first six years or so, he mostly experimented on himself and his near relatives. In 1796, for the first time, he informed the medical world about homoeopathic philosophy through the medical journals.
In 1810 AD, he published his famous book, The Organon of Rational Medicine, also called Organon of Hahnemann and then prepared The Materia Medica between 1811 and 1821 AD.
Traditional medical doctors of that time strongly opposed him. In 1820 AD, the proponents of the old allopathic system of medicine had his system of homoeopathy declared unlawful by the government, and even they went to the extent of suing him. However, before Homoeopathy was declared unlawful, Hahnemann sent for Prince Karl Schwarzenberg of Austria, and treated him successfully in Leipzig. The Prince being naturally grateful to Dr. Hahnemann recommended to King Friedrich that all restrictions against homoeopathy should be removed and in future none should be re-imposed. Unfortunately for Dr. Hahnemann, the Prince re-indulged himself in a life of ease and resorted to alcoholism. He became seriously sick again and he was treated allopathically but to no avail. When he died, the Austrian government blamed the Prince’s death on Dr. Hahnemann. The public was outraged, his books were burnt in the open and Dr. Hahnemann had to run for his life. He took shelter in Cothen, was patronised by the Duke of Cothen and he stayed there for 14 years researching chronic illnesses.
He published the first edition of his research in 1828. In 1830, his wife passed away. He married a French lady in 1835 and moved to Paris where he practiced homoeopathy till his death in 1843. The year 1835 is the same historic year in which the Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was born in Qadian, India.
Homoeopathy means “like cures like.” This is the method of treating a disease with the materials derived from the toxic and injurious agents causing similar signs and symptoms complex. Before Dr. Hahnemann, this system was evidently outside the established system of allopathic treatment, although some of the treatments offered there worked on the same line as homoeopathy. These, however, were not understood. A few such practices were in vogue on an experimental basis and in a limited controlled way. For example, Ipecac and Opium were given in a diluted tinctured form to relieve nausea and vomiting. In fact, both these medicines are known as strong vomiting and nausea inducers. Dr. Hahnemann had experimented on many such drugs and was surprised to note that not only did they cause a certain illness, yet at the same time they cured that particular illness when administered in diluted form.
During this deep and thoughtful experimentation, Dr. Hahnemann discovered the fantastic defense system of the human body. The physicians believed that the human body had the power of defending itself but were unaware of its magnanimity and the principle of its working. They did not how to utilize the defensive nature of the body against the establishment of the disease. This secret was revealed to Dr. Hahnemann after his constant, thoughtful deep study of the human body’s defense system. His observations about the great defensive capability of the human body were astounding and unbelievable, but must be believed because the observations he offered were so clear. In support of this, Dr. Hahnemann further noted that the body reacts naturally to every external attack. Anything alien to the human body, be it an article of food, drug or poison, provokes the body to react against it. External abuse of the body is quickly overcome by the bodily defenses. During continuous experimentation and observation, he postulated that if in the past, some disease has been overlooked and not reacted to by the body, then the introduction of a similar symptoms-producing agent in extremely diluted and pacified form would induce defensive body reaction and eliminate the sickness.