Dr Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), physician, chemist, herbalist, and translator, formalised the Law of Similars and the Law of the Minimum Dose into a system of medicine known as Homoeopathy.
A homoeopathy prescription is based upon your characteristic totality of symptoms – mind, emotions, body – and the medicine may be a preparation from the plant, animal or mineral kingdom.
The medicine must have the potential to cause the very symptoms that you need healing. For example, with coffee your mind may race, your nervous system may feel overtaxed, you may experience palpitations, etc.
A microdose of coffea cruda can be useful for insomnia when characterised by the prementioned symptoms. The closer the resonance or the match of the symptom-picture of the medicine with the symptom-picture of you, the more effective the healing.
In 1791, he translated an English article on the
use of Peruvian bark, from which quinine is obtained to cure Malaria. Struck
by this, he started experimenting, testing small doses of the bark
on himself. He noticed that he developed palpitations, became
drowsy, and that his fingers and feet became quite cold.
He
noted symptoms of anxiety, with chilliness and trembling, a marked
thirst, and intense weakness. There was a numb disagreeable
sensation over the whole of his body. These symptoms occurred
suddenly and regularly, lasting for about 2-3 hours. When
he repeated the dose, they reoccurred.
When he stopped taking
the drug, the symptoms vanished and he recovered. Hahnemann
had produced in himself the symptoms of Malaria, the very disease
that Peruvian bark was supposed to cure.
Thus,
he started on the long road of rediscovery that like cures like,
otherwise known as the 'Law of Similars.' Hahnemann called
this process of testing substances on healthy persons a 'proving.' It
demonstrated that every remedy has imprinted in it a symptom
picture. When the symptom picture that the remedy produces
in a healthy person fits the characteristics of a patient, then
a 'similimun' is achieved and a cure will result.
By the
end of his life, Hahnemann has scientifically 'proved' over 100
remedies on himself and on his colleagues. More than 2000
remedies have now been 'proved,' although a much smaller number
are commonly used in practice.
