Who was Samuel Hahnemann?

April 10, 2021

Every year, the World Homeopathy day is celebrated on April 10. The day is celebrated to commemorate the birth anniversary of the founder of Homeopathy Dr Samuel Hahnemann. In India, the Homeopathy Day was celebrated under the following theme:
Theme: Homeopathy: Roadmap for Integrative Medicine

Who was Samuel Hahnemann?

Dr Samuel Hahnemann was born on April 10, 1755. He was a German physician and was best known for creating pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. The pseudoscientific system is called Homeopathy. Pseudoscience is a set of practices that are scientific and factual but are incompatible with scientific methods.

Dr Hahnemann was dissatisfied of the fact that the medicines in his time at times created more harm than good. Thus, he gave up practicing medicine in 1784. Then on, he started investigating causes of alleged errors in the medicines.

How did Samuel invent Homeopathy?

He encountered the fact that Cinchona, the bark of Peruvian tree was effective in treating malaria. According to him, this was possible because of the astringency of the Peruvian tree. Astringency is the property that causes skin cell or other body cells to contract.

To research about the effect of Cinchona on human body he self-applied it. The drug then induced malaria like symptoms in him. With this he concluded that it would do so in any healthy individual.

Based on the above invention, he framed the concept that “Like Cures Like”, that is, “that which can produce symptoms in healthy individuals can treat a sick patient who is suffering from same kind of symptoms”. This principle was named by him as “Homeopathy”. This is the base of homeopathic treatment.

The World Homeopathy Day is different from World Health Day.