Healing Arts Center for Children

HOMEOPATHY

The word Homeopathy (or Homoeopathy) is derived from the Greek words homoios, meaning like or similar, and pathos, meaning suffering or disease.

Homeopathy is a system of medical therapeutics for treating people and animals on the basis of the principle of "similae" or "simile." The great homeopathic principle is (in Latin) "Similia similibus curentur," meaning "Let like be treated by like." Indeed, Homeopathy finds its first roots recorded in the writings of Hippocrates (c.470-400 bc), the "Father of Medicine," wherein he espoused that healing is found in the methods of "contraries" and "similars." Hippocrates wrote that "Disease is eliminated through remedies able to produce similar symptoms." These ideas were later rediscovered by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) a medical physician who, through a process of experimental and scientific discovery, largely developed what Homeopathic medicine is today.

Indeed, Hahnemann demonstrated that homeopathic principles of simile and potency could cure typhoid and cholera exceptionally better than the conventional medicine of his day (Cholera and typhoid were then epidemic in Europe because of 3 major wars, namely, the Seven Years' War, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars). Hahnemann himself healed 180 cases of typhus with only one fatality. And one of his pupils lost only six cholera patients among 154 treated, whereas in the same town, of the 1500 patients treated by orthodox methods, 55% (825 people) died.

Later, in 1854 in Britain, a cholera epidemic was stopped in Homeopathic hospitals with only a 16.4% death rate compared to that of a 51.8% death rate at other hospitals practicing conventional medicine. Today, unlike nutritional substances, Homeopathic substances are considered over the counter medicines, recognized as powerful entities whereas all other forms of alternative medications, including herbals, are considered dietary supplements.