So... what is it?

Estimated reading time 7 min. Don't worry, no one will judge you if you skim.

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, was a real renaissance man. Born in 1755 in Meissen, Germany to a working family living off the income generated through his father’s employment as a porcelain painter. Times were tight, and young Sammy was often taken out of school when the family couldn’t afford to send him. Being the bright young lad that he was, Sammy started tutoring his fellow students to pay his own way. 

At 20, with barely enough to scrape by, he left for Leipzig to study medicine. To support himself, he continued tutoring and began translating texts on chemistry, medicine and botany which, given that he was fluent in 7 languages, came rather easy to him. 

After a bit of wandering, he completed medical school and received his degree in 1779. 

He then attempted to settle down while practicing medicine, and during this time married his first wife, Johanna, an apothecary’s daughter. 

He lasted a whopping 5 years in medicine before calling uncle and frankly admitting that his patients would be better off without his “help.” 

He and Jo had 11 kids over the years, so to generate income to support their growing family, he continued his work translating and in private practice even though he couldn’t count on medicine as a steady stream of income due to his growing criticism of the barbaric medical practices of the time. 

Kind of makes me wonder what he’d have to say about some of the medical practices today, but I digress. 

At one point, the family was in a bad way - seven people living in one room without two dimes to rub together - kind of bad way. 

He spent every other night tirelessly doing his translation work in order to fund his growing passion of finding a better system. There had to be a more effective and less dangerous method of healing. 

Then, in 1791, while translating Cullen’s Materia Medica, he found it! Or at least the start of it. 

Cullen figured that the reason cinchona bark (what quinine is derived from), was effective in the treatment of malaria was due to it being bitter. But Hahnemann, who had been raised to “prove all things” and had been translating things of this nature for a while now, knew that not everything that was bitter was useful in treating malaria. 

So, as any broke, curious polymath in his late 40’s would do, he began experimenting on himself. He gave himself, a healthy man, cinchona bark and guess what? It caused him to have the same symptoms it would cure in a sick person! 

Did the cinchona bark give him malaria? 

No, but it gave him the symptoms of malaria which he knew well since he had previously contracted it and been successfully treated with cinchona. 

He had it! But there was so much more to learn… 

Since he’d already been experimenting on himself, he began experimenting on his family and friends. While arguably unethical, these original “provings” are the foundation of our materia medica. And yes, modern provings are still being conducted today. 

Don’t worry though, they are now conducted in much safer situations with far more regard for ethics and consent. 

Homeopathic provings involve giving a healthy person or group of people a substance (usually in potency, but we’ll get to that later), and recording the symptoms that are produced. 

These symptom pictures that are produced are the ones we are “matching” to the symptom pictures in our clients.

So, the law of similars, treating symptoms with substances that create those symptoms, was the first key. However, Hahnemann understood that even with substances that were nontoxic, there was a need to minimize the dose so as to give just enough to help - but not enough to harm. The question was how? 

He began experimenting with smaller and smaller amounts to see just how little was needed to bring about a cure. Keep in mind he was living in a time that threw the book at it with really aggressive treatments (bloodletting and mercury for example) and he’d witnessed some pretty devastating outcomes of the widely used practices in his day and knew he couldn’t align himself with any part of that. 

So, in his quest to find the smallest effective dose, he diluted his medicines, vigorously shook them between each step of dilution . . . and guess what? Not only did they still work, they were even more effective than when they were used in their crude form! 

This process of dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking), was the second key. 

This serial process of dilution and succussion, called dynamization or potentization, is how homeopathic remedies are still being manufactured. The amount of dilution and succussion needed varies depending on the final “potency” of the remedy that is desired. 

Hahnemann also recognized the importance of considering the person as a whole and taking an individualized approach. The one size fits all method wasn't going to work for him. Through observation of the different ways each person experienced their symptoms, even within the same condition, he realized it was imperative to take utmost care in listening to his patients as they told him the specific ways they were suffering. How they experienced their symptoms varied from person to person and is what led him to selecting the most well-suited remedy in each case. This was the third key. Individualization. 

Homeopathy is the second most widely used system of medicine in the world with over 200 years of clinical evidence showing its efficacy. There is also a growing body of clinical research on the effectiveness of homeopathy in treating numerous conditions such as ear infections, respiratory infections, hay fever, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, and ADHD with more studies being conducted all the time. 

You can learn more here. 

Kind of begs the question that if homoeopathy has been widely used for so long and has all this research and clinical evidence, why don’t more people know about it? 

Why do the bulk of the internet search results dismiss most of its validity? 

If it’s so safe and effective, why isn’t it being taught in medical schools? 

Well, it was! 

As Hahnemann’s students spread the word all over Europe and the U.S., homeopathic medical schools popped up all over the place. The first one was in the U.S. in Allentown, PA. Sidenote, my husband’s great uncle was a student at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia back in the day on his way to becoming an orthopedic surgeon. 

And did you know that the American Institute of Homeopathy (AIH) is the oldest medical society in the U.S.? It’s even older than the American Medical Association (AMA). 

So, what the heck happened? 

In the U.S., by the turn of the century, approximately 1 in 5 physicians were a homeopath. There were over 100 homeopathic hospitals and over 20 homeopathic medical schools. Not to mention the roughly 1000 homeopathic pharmacies. 

So, what gives? Why did it lose momentum and seem to fall out of vogue despite its safety and efficacy? 

People happened. We have this crazy habit of getting in our own way. 

The AMA was founded a few years after the AIH in opposition to all the homeopathic medical doctors. Homeopathy was inexpensive, effective, challenged the other practices of the time, and posed a huge threat. So, pharmaceutical companies spoke out against its validity and published multiple articles criticizing it. 

The state medical societies also took a stand and started cancelling any members who even consulted with a homeopath. 

Then came the Flexner Report. The Carnegie Foundation hired Flexner to go in and take a look at all the medical schools in the U.S. to see who was worthy of their funding. 

The homeopathic schools failed to impress Flexner since they were more aligned with clinical evidence than lab work, so they lost their funding. Even the state licensing boards started to use the Flexner Report to determine which graduates could sit for the licensing exams. 

The other problem happening alongside all this was that homeopaths had begun to disagree with each other over methodology and consequently, the whole thing started to unravel.

R.I.P. U.S. homeopathy education. 

Homeopathy continued to flourish in other parts of the world and is still widely used in the U.K., India, France, Germany, Mexico, and South America regardless of it going dark for a bit in the U.S. Even the royal family has been using homeopathy since 1830. 

Then, in the late 60’s interest in natural and alternative medicines began to grow here in the US and people began searching for modalities that were closer to nature and worked with the body rather than against it. 

As a result, by the late 70’s, homeopathy in the U.S. had begun to have a revival. Seminars and trainings started popping up as interest increased. 

Now, as people are becoming more and more disenchanted with the allopathic approach to health care and actively seeking alternatives, homeopathy schools are filled with folks seeking a quality education in this holistic system of medicine.