Intro to Homeopathy

What is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy was developed 200 years ago by Dr. Samuel Hahneman, and is currently the second most widely used form of medicine in the world. It is built around two main principles: that disease is simply the manifestation of an imbalance in the body’s energy, and that like cures like.

The first principle encourages homeopaths to find links and see connections between things that conventional doctors may view as completely unrelated. The body is a complicated organism with a great deal of “institutional memory” . . . and it may still be having unhealthy reactions to past trauma. This is why your initial homeopathic consultation can take at least two hours — your homeopath is acting as a detective, finding and piecing together clues from the past to form a cohesive understanding of the present.

The “Law of Similars,” or the idea that like cures like, is recognized by homeopaths and allopathic (conventional) doctors alike. From this law came the practice of inoculation — and the understanding that introducing a small amount of a toxin into the body teaches the body how to cope with that toxin more effectively.

A Brief History of Homeopathy

In the late 1700s, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann grew frustrated with the dangerous and ineffective medicine of his time. He made a series of discoveries that led him to develop a new system of medicine based on principles that cured his patients. In the following century, homeopathy grew into one of the main medical systems in the U.S., Europe, India, Central and South America, and many other parts of the world. India's medical students go through the first years of training in "western" medicine, then half of them choose to go onto advanced training in homeopathy. The British royal family has employed a homeopathic physician for their care for the last several generations. Homeopathy suffered a decline in the U.S. in the early twentieth century, and has undergone a renaissance in the last several decades.