The modern homeopathy has about 200 years of history. The homeopathic thought can be understood and studied thoroughly thanks to Dr. Samuel Hahnemann ‘ s researches and works.
He was a German doctor ( 1755-1853) who in the eighteenth century examined and elaborated again Hippocrates ‘ thought about the simile law. Hippocrates was born in the fifth century (about 460-370 B.C.). He was a member of a caste of doctors belonging to the branch descending from mythical Aesculapius God. One of his revolutionary thoughts was to consider every illness due to natural reasons, even the epilepsy, considered by all the people a sacred illness. His treatise De morbo sacro is the confirmation of detachment of traditional illness from teurgical one. Hippocrates distinguishes the philosophy from the medicine; he maintains that it is necessary to find the causes of illness, not be satisfied with give to them simply some names. His contribution has been to explain the medicine as a derivation of an addition of previous elaborations, result of empirical practise and theoretical acquisition. These two together can do as fruits new discoveries, more knowledge and scientific progress. In practise he method of Hippocrates ‘ medicine is found on art and ability synthesis of practise ability and scientific knowledge. According to Hippocrates a determinate therapy must carry the patient to recover the lost balance by a diet, a correct life regime or by therapeutic intervention, following the natural evolution of the illness. Medical knowledge and careful observation of the patient can allow to doctor to formulate a diagnosis and a prognosis; instead to keep health or to recover it , as above mentioned, the fundamental factors are diet, bodily exercise and sleep. It’s on this basis that Dr. S. Hahnemann, taking again Hippocrates’ studies verified experimental simile law and adopted it to create homeopathic doctrine; it seems that Hippocrates himself tried to give to vomiting patients their vomit watered down to stop the stimulus. Hahnemann introduced two elements to homeopathic therapy: the use of much diluted doses to infinitesimal levels and the subdivision of the patient according to “grounds”. These grounds represented characteristics as the constitution, the psychic and character state, the symptoms and how these ones were born. All this inclines to see the patient just as Hippocrates was seeing him, in his total dimension, so in olisistic way. It seems that Chineses tried to cure the smallpox patients by the skin residue (scabs) of the patients themselves, pulverized and inhaled as snuff. The Doctor Bruguiere (1734) made some experiments according to homeopathic concept. In the eighteenth century the Doctor Jenner (1749-1823) took care of his family by Chinese method above mentioned to cure the smallpox, and in the 1774 the Doctor Jesty vaccinated his family in the same way. James Tyler Kent (1849-1916) began his works after Hahnemann. He was a traditional doctor. As doctor he couldn’t cure his wife, he addressed to an homeopath doctor to find the cure; after his wife ‘s recovery (thanks to this therapy), he began to use himself the homeopathy. These are some of the researchers who created this curative system; it isn’t invasive and it is natural.
dr. Ezio Rittà, D.Hom.
