Hahnemann's concept

Samuel Hahnemann conceived of homeopathy while translating a medical treatise by Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen into German.^[1] Being sceptical of Cullen’s theory concerning cinchona’s action in malaria, Hahnemann ingested some of the bark specifically to see if it cured fever "by virtue of its effect of strengthening the stomach".^[49] Upon ingesting the bark, he noticed few stomach symptoms, but did experience fever, shivering and joint pain, symptoms similar to some of the early symptoms of malaria, the disease that the bark was ordinarily used to treat. From this, Hahnemann came to believe that all effective drugs produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the diseases that they can treat. This later became known as the "law of similars", the most important concept of homeopathy.^[1] The term "homeopathy" was coined by Hahnemann and first appeared in print in 1807, although he began outlining his theories of "medical similars" in a series of articles and monographs in 1796.^[50]

Hahnemann began to test what effects substances produced in humans, a procedure which would later become known as "proving".^[51] These time-consuming tests required subjects to clearly record all of their symptoms as well as the ancillary conditions under which they appeared. Hahnemann saw this data as a way of identifying substances suitable for the treatment of particular diseases.^[51] The first collection of provings was published in 1805 and a second collection of 65 remedies appeared in his book, Materia Medica Pura, in 1810.^[52] Hahnemann believed that large doses of drugs that caused similar symptoms would only aggravate illness, and so he advocated extreme dilutions of the substances; he devised a technique for making dilutions that he believed would preserve a substance's therapeutic properties while removing its harmful effects,^[53] proposing that this process aroused and enhanced "spirit-like medicinal powers held within a drug".^[54] He gathered and published a complete overview of his new medical system in his 1810 book, The Organon of the Healing Art, whose 6th edition, published in 1921, is still used by homeopaths today.^[1]