The 10 th April’ 1755 is a ‘Red Letter Day’ in the ‘Annals of Medicine’ which witnessed the Birth of a Reformer, a Philanthropist in the person of Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, Son of Christian Gottfried Hahnemann, Johana Christiana of Germany.
Samuel Hahnemann was a brilliant student. He was fluent in languages like Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Spanish, German, some smattering of Chaldiac. He obtained his M.D. degree from Erlangen University in the year’1779. After which, he practiced allopathic medicine and excelled in the field.
In the year’ 1790, whilst translating Cullen’s Materia Medica, he came to know about the therapeutic indications of Peruvian bark (Cinchona Officinalis) that it is bitter in taste, cures Intermittent fever. Hahnemann got dissatisfied with this explanation, did an experiment by taking the medicine himself twice a day . Eventually, he noticed symptoms very similar to Malaria fever. This unexpected result set up a new train of thoughts in his mind . He conducted similar experiments on himself, other individuals with other medicines whose curative actions in certain diseases had been well established, On the basis of such successive experiments, Hahnemann came to the conclusion that medicines cure diseases because they can produce similar diseases in healthy individuals.
Finally, in the year’ 1796, the discovery was brought to light in his essay titled “An Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs, some Examination of the previous Principles”.
In this essay he put forward his New Doctrine, ‘Similia Similibus Curentur’.There are many examples in the past, of allopathic doctors turning to Homoeopathy because of the fascinating results it produces.