Homeopathy is actually based upon sound scientific principles. Discovered by German doctor Samuel Hahnemann over 200 years ago, he was the first doctor to conduct trials on medicines! 

In his first experiment, though perfectly healthy at the time, Hahnemann found that by giving himself repeated doses of peruvian bark, he brought on all the symptoms of a malaria attack -  fever with heat and chills.  He named this remedy Cinchona Bark or CHINA for short.

He then wondered if a substance which could cause a disease might cure it by using tiny doses - which he found to be the case.  This is healing according to the Law of Similars or ‘like cures like’, described by the Greek physician Hippocrates as far back as the 4^th century BC.  Orthodox medicine generally utilises the Law of Opposites, i.e. antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, antihistamines, etc.

Hahnemann set about discovering the healing properties of plants, metals and minerals by testing them on himself and on healthy volunteers or ‘Provers’, painstakingly recording all the symptoms that each substance caused.  He even created a ‘Provers Union’!

After some years of practising, Hahnemann noticed that by serially diluting and succussing a substance (shaking and striking the phial a number of times between numerical potencies), it became safer to use on the sick. He found unwanted side effects disappeared and medicines were made more effective.

 

Hahnemann went on to test hundreds of substances on himself and healthy volunteer Provers, matching the tested substances to heal symptoms in his patients and all the while keeping accounts of detailed observations.  Far from being ideas-based, this is completely evidence-based, empirical medicine - an almost unique concept at that time.