The Greek philosopher Empedocles (490-430 BC) first enunciated the principle of “like cures like” that, 2,300 years later, was to become the foundation of Homeopathy. This principle was afterwards appropriated by Hippocrates (460-360 BC), who incorporated it in aphorism # 42 of his classic masterpiece “Places of Man”. In the same aphorism, Hippocrates also included the principle of “contrary cures contrary”, later to become the cornerstone of Allopathic Medicine.
The principle of “like cures like” remained a totally useless Medical curiosity for the next 23 Centuries, until Dr. Hahnemann brought it back to life and made it the basis of his work.

A work that has been monumental.
Not only that. It was carried out in the midst of the thickest and most profound medical obscurantism—which means that Dr. Hahnemann had nowhere to turn for information and/or guidance of any kind.

Allopathic discoveries came thick and fast after mid-19 th Century.
The 18 th Century and the first half of the 19 th Century, however, was rather stagnant in this regard. The only Allopathic breakthroughs worthy of note were Dr. Lind’s findings on scurvy, Dr. Withering’s discovery of the properties of the foxglove or Digitalis Purpurea and Dr. Edward Jenner’s—or was it Lady Montagu’s?—discovery, or import, of the smallpox vaccine.

The Scotsman Dr. James Lind (1716-1794) was the first successful Allopathic Researcher in History, as far as I have been able to determine.
Scurvy, also known then as “putrid gums”, had killed over one million seafarers in the 17 th and 18 th Century. To study how to control it, Dr. Lind chose 12 sailors with scurvy, and divided them into pairs. He gave one member of each pair orange juice, while the other member received seawater, vinegar or some other fluid. Only sailors who received orange juice were cured. Dr. Lind published his findings in 1742—a full eleven years before Dr. Hahnemann was born.
His discovery was recognized and accepted by the British Navy only in 1802. This acceptance, albeit belated, came very much at hand for the battle of Trafalgar, fought in 1805. The crews of Napoleon’s ships-of-the-line were stricken with scurvy. Admiral Villeneuve, commander of Napoleon’s fleet, thought that British sailors were also prey of the same disease—which they weren’t, thanks to the British Admiralty’s timely acceptance of Dr. Lind’s discovery. The healthy British sailors, though vastly outnumbered by the French, were able to out maneuver their foe and win the day. I often wonder what the outcome would have been if the British sailors had also been stricken with scurvy. Dr. Lind’s discovery very likely changed the outcome of the battle of Trafalgar and also of World History as we know it.
It took two hundred additional years to elucidate the chemical structure of Vitamin C or ascorbic acid, the antiescorbutic agent present in citrus fruits .

Dr. William Withering (1741-1799) heard of a medicine woman who claimed she could cure the “dropsy” with a tea prepared with seven herbs. Dr. Withering found that, in effect, that tea was useful; so he tested each of the herbs individually.
He found that only one of the components, the leaves of the foxglove (or Digitalis Purpurea), could cure dropsy. Up to this day extracts of the whole leaf, or chemical derivatives of Digitalis are used in the Allopathic treatment of the dropsy, or congestive heart failure.

In turn, Dr. Edward Jenner (1749-1823), a contemporary of Dr. Withering, noticed that cowgirls, when milking cows infested with cowpox, would develop smallpox-like lesions in their hands, but nowhere else. These lesions would disappear spontaneously after a time without leaving a trace, and the cowgirls would never fall ill with smallpox afterwards. Dr. Jenner inoculated the discharge of infested cow udders in his patients. This is one of the stories regarding the discovery of vaccination.
Being the other that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1767) saw in Turkey, in 1717, how healthy people inoculated with the pox would afterwards become immune to the disease. Back in England, she championed the procedure—before Dr. Jenner was born. By the way, vaccine comes from Latin vaccinus, that means related to cows and in turn from Sanskrit vasa, cows.
And, by the way also, smallpox was called that way to differentiate it from pox or bigpox, as syphilis was called in those days.

Dr. Lind’s discovery of vitamin C, as well of Dr. Withering’s of digitalis and Dr. Jenner/Mme. Montague of small pox vaccination were indeed momentous landmarks in the History of Medicine.
However, these discoveries were only one preventive or therapeutic achievement per worker. Dr. Hahnemann, on the other hand, experimented with well over one hundred therapeutically useful substances during his lifetime.

Not only Allopathic discoveries were scarce in the 18th Century. Everyday Allopathic practice at that time can only be characterized as atrocious.

Physicians would bleed their patients within an inch of their lives—and not infrequently beyond. Take as an example Doctor James Craik, who assisted General George Washington during his final illness. The frequent and abundant bloodlettings he performed are considered to have been the cause, or at the very least one of the main causes, of General Washington’s untimely death.

Bloodlettings were performed with the aid of lancets, leeches and cups. Phlebotomy, or cutting open a vein, was chosen where veins were available, particularly if they overlaid the organ or structure considered as diseased. In either instance, bloodletting was usually continued until the patient fainted–supposedly the only way to “really cleansing the blood”. It was strongly recommended to use veins other than the jugular, even if more difficult to find, to practice bloodletting in infants; for a pierced jugular can suck in air and kill the babies. It was also recommended to place as many leeches as possible around the patient’s anus if the liver or intestines were found to be inflamed . Leeches were used for bloodletting close to orifices, where cupping would be difficult to perform; even though leeches would often slither into organic cavities, thus creating some annoying problems. Cupping was favored where the skin surface was flat enough to allow the 2" mouth of the cup to take firm hold. Then, in order to revive the victim, it was highly recommended to make the patient smell a whiff of vinegar. This whiff was to be followed by the ingestion of sips of urine mixed with water.
For cupping, short and shallow incisions, called scarifications, are made into the patient’s skin with a surgical knife—never sterilized between patients, but just wiped clean with a cloth and sometimes even rinsed. Then a 2" mouth glass cup is held over an open flame until very hot–or, alternatively, its mouth is rubbed with purified spirits and then set afire with the cup held upright. Afterwards, the cup’s mouth is firmly pressed around the scarified area. As the cup cools down, vacuum inside the cup forces the patients’ blood into it.
Setons were used to produce and drain pus. A seton is a non-sterilized thread or horsehair that is stitched through the patient’s intact skin, in and out, along a length of around 2" to 3", with the aid of a non-sterilized needle. Needle and thread are then removed and saved to be used in other patients. The pus produced by the inevitable infection is then drained through the holes produced by the insertion of the seton, or else through a surgical incision performed in between with a non sterilized surgical knife. This pus was called pus bonum et laudabile, meaning pus good and commendable, because it was supposed to cleanse away toxins as it discharged. It was defined thus to differentiate it from the watery and evil smelling pus that oozes from wounds that are decomposing.
Doctors would also apply crushed Spanish fly ointments to blister the skin with the purpose of cleansing the blood through the liquid that would appear into the large blisters.
Powerful emetics and equally strong purgatives were routinely prescribed to make their patients vomit violently and to defecate till they collapsed—all in order, as they would say, to “purify the [patients’] blood”.
Antimony, mercury, arsenic, cyanide, strychnine, jalap and croton, administered at huge doses, were prominent drugs in the Pharmacopœia. Opium was prescribed in staggering amounts. Iodine was injected into the eyeball to treat retinal detachment. Smoke enemas were enthusiastically recommended for the treatment of certain diseases. Cauterizations with red-hot irons (there was no anesthetics then), applied over some diseases areas, such as syphilitic chancres, dog bites and others, were also enthusiastically used.

Newly discovered scientific curiosities, such as electricity , were promptly put into clinical use.
Maria Theresa von Paradis, a talented young pianist and composer, was one of its victims. She lived in 18 th Century Vienna and suffered from hysterical blindness , for which she was receiving a pension from compassionate Empress Maria Theresa .
The Empress’ Physician, Dr. Heinrich Stoerk, very famous then, became interested in Ms. Paradis’ plight and enthusiastically treated her with the Spanish fly , leeches , cauterization and purgatives for many years. When all proved fruitless to restore the patient’s sight, Dr. Stoerk encased her head in plaster for two months. This treatment produced severe infections and seizures, but no improvement .
So Dr. Stoerk decided to try electricity, a curiosity in those days. Ms. von Paradis received a total of 3,000 electric shocks on her eyes—which became a bloated, bloody mess.
At this stage, Ms. Paradis very sensibly decided to try something else. She consulted Dr. Franz A. Mesmer, of animal magnetism fame. Dr. Mesmer did his mesmerisms and Ms. Paradis recovered her sight .
Once hale, this unfortunate young woman lost her inspiration as a composer, her talent as a pianist and, to boot, her imperial pension; so her father became furious with Dr. Mesmer and threatened to sue him. But this is another story...

Maternity could not escape from this collective immolation.
The rate of obstetrical deaths and of woman left invalid after delivery due to infections was mind boggling. This was due to the fact that Doctors did everything with their bare hands in those days—surgery, autopsies, deliveries, etc., and would never bother to wash their hands. Wisely, most mothers would rather have their babies at home, assisted by midwives, instead of going to a Hospital and be cruelly mishandled there by the Staff Doctors, all of whom were male.
The Hungarian Physician Dr. Ignaz Philip Semmelweis (1818-1865) worked for a time in the Obstetric Clinic of the famous Viennese Allgemeine Krankenhaus. As it happened everywhere else, most women admitted in its Obstetric Clinic died of gynecological infections after having had their babies there. Dr. Semmelweis was fired by his Chief, a Dr. Klein, for having had the unconscionable effrontery of requesting his colleagues to wash their hands before assisting a delivery, particularly if they were coming into the delivery room after having performed an autopsy. Dr. Semmelweis died several years later, profoundly depressed by this injustice. By the by, in German, klein appropriately means small or little.

Some prominent Allopathic Doctors hated this horrible Medicine, though most clung to it with incredible tenacity.
Among those prominent Physicians was Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689). He was very partial to opium, though, and had it in very high regard as the ultimate therapeutic agent. He despised all other forms of treatment. He used to say that, “if all medicines but opium were dumped into the sea, it would be a great disgrace for the fishes [sic], but an equally great blessing for Humanity”.

The famous British Physician Dr. Thomas Addison (1793-1860), who worked at Guy’s Hospital in London, would seldom prescribe. After seeing a patient, he would often sit down to write a prescription, then hesitate, put the pen down and leave, mumbling “What’s the use!...”.
In Vienna, again in the famous Allgemeine Krankenhaus, the renowned Czech Prof. Dr. Joseph Skoda (1805-1881), an extraordinary semeiologist and diagnostician would also frequently abstain from prescribing, out of compassion and respect for his patients. The world renowned Czech Pathologist, Prof. Dr. Karl Freiherr von Rokitanski (1804-1878), also worked there. People in Vienna used to say that, in the Krankenhaus, Dr. Skoda’s wonderful diagnoses were inevitably followed by the equally magnificent autopsies performed by Dr. Rokitanski.

Dr. Hahnemann and his prodigious and systematic work shines like a beacon in the barren, uninspiring and very often appalling 18th Century Medical landscape.
All by himself, Dr. Hahnemann created an entirely new Medical paradigm based on the principle that like cures like, discovered new and marvelous therapeutic uses of many substances and conceived the idea of only one remedy per patient, instead of several drugs per disease—with no toxicity or side effects, to boot.
He also devised an entirely new system for testing Homeopathically prepared substances. In other words, Dr. Hahnemann also created, single-handed, the first effective methodology for systematic Clinical Therapeutic Research.
Not only that. He also became aware of the importance of the Vital Force and of its relationship with the patients’ balance and health. He created new definitions. He conceived a novel classification of miasmas, was able to discern between diseases and miasmas, etc., etc.
All after years of study, hard work, observation, and accurate interpretation of what he had observed.
His work was as accurate as it has been colossal. Homeopathy was born complete and ready to work from Dr. Hahnemann’s mind, in the same fashion Pallas Athena was born fully grown and armed from the head of her father Zeus.
The only tasks remaining to latter Homeopaths has been the study some new miasmas and remedies, the preparation of new Repertories, the use of Homeopathy as part of novel forms of combined Allopathic/Homeopathic Research and the application of Dr. Hahnemann's principles, ideas and techniques in the benefit of generations of patients.
When one studies Dr. Hahnemann’s work, and starts to capture glimpses of its author’s personality, admiration knows no bounds.

The principle of Like cures like embodies the essence of Homeopathy.
Meaning that, without “like cures like”, also known as similia similibus curentur, there is no Homeopathy. All its other characteristics, such as the administration of only one remedy at a time for each acute disease, or per treatment of the Whole individual chronic disease-bearing patient, the dynamization of remedies, Provings, etc. are indeed important. Nevertheless, they are all but consequences, or by-products, of similia similibus curentur.
The principle of like cures like is the mirror image of the Allopathic “contrary cures contrary”, that leads to the treatment of one disease at a time.

Let me tell you now how it started.

The Spaniards learnt quite a few things from the natives that inhabited the New World.
In Perú, for instance, they saw how the Incas warded off “intermittent fevers”.
These fevers were known, in other insalubrious areas of the world, as “swamp fevers”. Today we call those fevers malaria (from Italian mal- bad or evil, and -aria, air) or paludism.
In the early 1600’s, the Count of Chinchón was the Viceroy of Perú. His wife, the Countess of Chinchón—or Chinchona—fell ill with the fevers. She suffered a great deal until she was cured with a bitter brew made with the bark of a tree that the great Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) would later call Chinchona because of the Countess; a term that was later changed to Cinchona.
Jesuit missionaries discovered that the bark of the Chinchona tree was much easier to transport once dried up and pulverized, while all its therapeutic virtues remained intact. Chinchona bark started to be used in Europe around 1650, variously under the names of “china bark” (thus its pharmaceutical name, China officinalis), “Jesuit’s powder” or “Countess powder” among others. It became a sensation.
It is hard for us nowadays to understand how totally powerless people were, in matters related to health, until the second half of the 19th Century. Something as useful as these powders was bound to produce quite a stir.
This commotion, in turn, brought forth a cascade of comments in the Medical literature of the time. Which, as it happened with every other form of communication, had increased exponentially since Guttemberg had invented the printing press.
One of the best selling Medical writings of the time was William Cullen’s “Lectures of Materia Medica” a book that had, among other topics, a description of Cinchona and its effects.

A copy of this book fell into the hands of a nomad who was barely making ends meet by means of translating Medical treatises and other works into German. The name of the translator was Samuel Hahnemann. This translator was an itinerant Medical Doctor who once had a brilliant future ahead—a future that he squandered by disputing with his colleagues.
This cantankerous individual would constantly throw onto his colleagues’ faces, and without mincing words, the claim that their methods were as useless as they were brutal, and would adamantly refuse to use them. Afterwards, the bone of contention with the Establishment became his daft idea that like cures like; an idea that, he claimed, could cure many people. So local Allopathic Physicans would soon get furious at him, and kick him out of one town after another.
After roaming about for a long time, Dr. Hahnemann had reached an extreme of poverty. In order to make ends meet, and give his growing family a modicum of food and comfort, Dr. Hahnemann worked all hours of days and nights translating Medical treatises into German. This Physician/translator heard of Dr. Cullen’s textbook, and thought it would be a good idea to translate it into German. It was a fateful decision.
Dr. Hahnemann became so interested in the effect of Cinchona that he decided to try the bark on himself.
To his astonishment, Dr. Hahnemann found that self-administration of Cinchona by mouth could produce the clinical picture of the dreaded swamp fevers. He also found that Cinchona produced the fevers in all who took it, whereas the miasmas that came from the swamps would only make several of the exposed individuals ill (people in those days had no idea about the danger posed by the Anopheles mosquito and even less about the Plasmodium malariæ in the genesis of this disease).
Furthermore, Dr. Hahnemann found that, aside from the fevers, Cinchona would produce symptoms in many organs and systems, a phenomenon seldom found in patients ill with swamp fever—and that all these changes would disappear when the administration of Cinchona was suspended.

From his studies, observations and experiments, Dr. Hahnemann concluded that the “artificial disease” caused by Cinchona was more powerful than the natural disease produced by the effluvia or miasmas in the swamps; since this artificial disease would attack everybody and would produce more symptoms than the natural disease paludism.
He also observed how the artificial disease brought about by Cinchona could be started at will with the administration of Cinchona, and terminated also at will when discontinuing its administration—unlike the natural fevers that, once started, could not be stopped.

And so, two ideas germinated in Dr. Hahnemann’s extraordinary mind:
The first was that a natural disease can be eliminated by the induction of a stronger artificial disease caused by a remedy, if and when that remedy produces symptoms similar to those of the natural disease.
The second, inevitable consequence of the first, was that like cures like.

The artificial disease caused by a Homeopathic remedy is more powerful than the natural one. It displaces the natural disease ailing the patient. Once displaced, the natural disease looses the supply of the patient’s Vital Force it needs for its development. The natural disease consequently vanishes, because nothing live can exist if devoid of Vital Force.
Then the artificial disease caused by the remedy is eliminated when the administration of the remedy is discontinued (Hahnemann S., Organon, 6th. Edition. § 26, 34 and others).
Dr. Hahnemann found that this sequence of event was consistently verifiable and repeatable with all Homeopathic remedies he tested and used in patients.

Only now did Dr. Hahnemann return to the practice of Medicine. In 1796 he published his first important work, the “Essay on a new Principle”.
It was the birth of Homeopathy.

Dr. Hahnemann’s work, I may perhaps add, was not performed by some well paid Scientist assisted by his or her staff in some modern, state of the art laboratory or Hospital.
Rather, it was done from 1785 onwards, at a time when the practice of Medicine was barbaric and when systematic Research was non-existent. Furthermore, it was performed by a man working alone and untutored. A man who was so poor that he could ill afford what he needed to start, let alone continue his experimental work.
He carried out his Research doggedly, besieged by poverty and uncertainty. Alone and against scorn and overwhelming odds.
The temptation of returning to Allopathy must have been overwhelming for him in those days. All he would have had to do was to practice the same Medicine all other Doctors were performing. Nobody would have found fault in this—except, of course, his conscience. His roaming, poverty and uncertainty would have instantly became stability, respect and riches had he yielded. Plus a good life for his family.
How sorely must he have been tempted! How enticing those thirty pieces of silver must have appeared when he was seeing his family suffer as his colleagues prospered and mocked him while he was besieged by the pangs of hunger! But he clung to his principles and stood firm.
Until eventually his admirable tenacity bore its fruits.

Dr. Hahnemann’s first discovered that many products can produce and annul artificial diseases according to the principle that like cures like. But many substances have side effects and toxicity, alas!
His next step was to find how to eliminate the ill effects of the substances he was studying. He started this phase of his work by diluting those natural substances but found that, after a certain dilution, the substances in solution would disappear—and also their beneficial effects (Hahnemann S., Organon, 6th Edition. § 56).
So he created succussion, that is, diluting or else triturating, and then shaking; something so far ahead of his time that only now we are starting to understand the effects of succussion on solutions.

It never ceases to amaze me how Dr. Hahnemann conceived that, by means of something as simple as diluting and shaking, he could unlock hitherto unsuspected therapeutic capabilities.
I often wonder what made him aware of the usefulness of succussion. Could it have been perhaps a dream? For it is known that some important inventors and empiricists found their greatest ideas during a dream.
Dr. William Kekule, for example, after a lot of frustrating work trying to figure out the structure of benzene, dreamt one night of six whirling ballerinas, each stationed in one of the angles of an hexagon.
Or take Walter Hunt, the American who invented of the tip-eyed sewing machine needle. After a lot of long and frustrating work attempting to device a useful needle, one night he had a nightmare in which he saw himself surrounded by savages, each aiming a spear at him—all of which spears had a hole near the tip.
Another explanation of how he discovered succussion has to do with the abominable state of the roads in his day, and the inevitable shaking of the solutions he carried when going to see his patients. Dr. Hahnemann, always the keenest of observers, might have become puzzled at how much more powerful his remedies became after a home visit than after a visit in his office.

At any rate, this is the saga of what happened after Dr. Hahnemann and Cinchona met each other.
And how, as the consequence of such an encounter one man, during a lifetime of incredible work and realizations, first re-discovered single-handedly the concept of “like cures like”, and then applied it together with everything that came in its wake. Such as dynamizations, effective treatments for chronic patients, the concept of balance, the role of the Vital Force as a curative agent, etc.
With untold benefits for those who suffer.

I have had, and currently have under my care, patients who are receiving or have received Cinchona as their Constitutional remedy.
Many are doing quite well.
I always tell my patients that Cinchona is the very first remedy Dr. Hahnemann tested in himself and a few other provers, and then administered to patients over two Centuries ago.
I also tell them that Dr. Hahnemann, at the time of his first encounter with the china bark, was very poor, translating to make ends meet somehow; dying year in and year out to practice the quality Medicine he loved.
And I also tell my patients that the Jesuit’s powder, when it met with that magnificent mind, produced this wondrous gift to Humanity that is Homeopathy.
And, as I tell my patients this story—and think, and write about it—I can’t help it but to mull how History in its often quiet, discreet and wily ways, manages to bring things and events and circumstances and marvelous people together. And how, as the consequence of these in appearance fortuitous encounters, so many extraordinary things have come forth to assist, help, and bring solace to Humanity.