Samuel Hahnemann

Lore & Background

He then supported himself as a translator of scientific texts while investigating medicine's errors. This led him to postulate the principle 'like cures like,' which became the basis of homeopathy. He also developed a theory that many diseases are caused by coffee, which he later abandoned in favor of a theory involving Psora.

Did You Know?

• Hahnemann became proficient in English, French, Italian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Hebrew.
• Hahnemann's thesis for his medical degree was titled 'Conspectus adfectuum spasmodicorum aetiologicus et therapeuticus' (A Dissertation on the Causes and Treatment of Spasmodic Diseases).

Creation of homeopathy

Hahnemann grew dissatisfied with the medicine of his era, particularly opposing practices like bloodletting. He believed that the treatments he had been taught sometimes harmed patients more than they helped, stating that his sense of duty prevented him from treating unknown diseases with unknown medicines, and that the fear of becoming a murderer or malefactor toward his fellow humans led him to abandon his practice around 1784. He then supported himself as a writer and translator while investigating what he saw as medicine's errors. While translating William Cullen's A Treatise on the Materia Medica, he encountered the claim that cinchona bark treated malaria due to its astringency.

Doubting this, he self-administered cinchona and observed that it induced malaria-like symptoms in himself. He concluded that a substance capable of producing symptoms in a healthy person could treat a sick person showing similar symptoms. This principle, "like cures like," became the foundation of homeopathy, a term he first used in an 1807 essay published in Hufeland's Journal.