One approach to curing a sick person of his or her illness is a practice called homeopathy. It is based on the idea that “likes are cured by likes.” This means that a drug that creates symptoms, or signs, of illness in a healthy person can be used to treat the same symptoms in a sick person.
A German physician named Samuel Hahnemann introduced the idea of homeopathy in 1796. Hahnemann did an experiment on himself with quinine, a medicine that had been used successfully to treat malaria. Even though Hahnemann was healthy, he found that taking large doses of quinine created symptoms of malaria in him. He concluded that an illness should be treated with drugs that produce symptoms of the illness in healthy people. He experimented with drugs on other
Hahnemann also thought that taking large doses of medicine would make a person's illness worse & that taking small doses works better to heal a person. Homeopathic theory states that a smaller dose of a remedy stimulates the body to defend itself against the disease.
Until homeopathy was discovered, many doctors had been treating their patients with methods that were often harsh on the body. For example, doctors sometimes prescribed many drugs for the patient to take. Homeopathy became popular because it was a milder way to treat illnesses. It was well received in many countries, including the United States, where the American Institute of Homeopathy was created in 1844. In general, doctors today criticize homeopathy because it focuses on a person's symptoms rather than on finding the cause of the illness. Homeopathy continues to be popular in Engl&, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, & Brazil.
healthy people to prove his finding.
