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The word "homeopathy" literally means "similar disease" and originates from the intuitions and discoveries of the German doctor Samuel H. Hahnemann, born in 1755.
While many people associate homeopathy with the idea of infinitesimal or extremely small, the real concept upon which homeopathy is based is that of "similarity", that is, the possibility to cure diseases with substances that cause symptoms similar to those of the actual disease in a healthy person.
Hahnemann experimented his intuitions on himself. He reflected on the resemblance of the clinical conditions of fever manifested by workers who handled cinchona and malarial diseases that were treated with quinine and decided to try the effects of cinchona on himself. The substance caused an intermittent fever that was in every way similar to that which was treated by the same quinine.
Therefore, it seemed that the same substance that could cause a disease could also cure it.
An example
Often people who suffer from canker sores describe the pain as if they had "sulphuric acid in their mouths". Actually, if we put sulphuric acid in contact with the oral mucosa, we obtain ulcerations quite similar to canker sores; what's more, if we were to perform a homeopathic experiment on healthy people, giving each one a dilution of Sulphuricum acidum for several days in a row, most of them would develop small ulcers in their mouths similar to canker sores.
Therefore, the concept behind homeopathy is this: if sulphuric acid is able to cause ulcerations similar to canker sores in healthy subjects, either due to a direct toxic effect or to the effect of the homeopathic experiment, we can try to use that same sulphuric acid to cure oral canker sores that occur spontaneously.
Gentle self-defense
Obviously, homeopathic therapy does not utilize pure sulphuric acid, but rather the smallest dilution possible. In this way the remedy acts as a vaccine, stimulating the body to defend itself against an aggression that is "similar" to that caused by the sulphuric acid and, most of all, without harming the body.
As a matter of fact, homeopathic therapy acts much like a vaccine because it stimulates the body's antibodies to organize themselves in its defense.
In addition, recovery, which is often quite rapid, comes about in a gentle and safe way because the remedies that are used are non-toxic and do not cause undesirable side-effects
Therefore, the two most important practical aspects of homeopathy are:
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it stimulates reactions within the body in a way similar to a vaccination, making use of the body's own ability to defend itself from external and internal aggressions;
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the substances used are non-toxic and therefore there is no risk of undesired or unknown side-effects.
The human being as a whole
Homeopathy detaches itself from the usual precepts of allopathic medicine that often only seeks to treat the body's symptoms without trying to re-create balance within the entire organism. The homeopathic doctor considers the body in its entirety along with its ways of reacting to illness in order to formulate a therapy that is not only physical, but also psychological at the same time
When a homeopathic doctor chooses the proper remedy (Sulphuricum acidum, for instance, for someone with certain types of mouth ulcers) he also takes into consideration various psychological characteristics of the patient that manifest themselves at the onset of the illness.
It's especially important to be attentive to the psychological state of a person in the case of disturbances that are specifically emotional, like insomnia or anguish, or disturbances in the sexual sphere.
In cases such as these, the therapy doesn't just treat the specific disturbance presented by the patient, but is geared towards his gradual return to the psychophysical balance that he enjoyed before the illness; all of this without necessarily using psychological drugs to bring about a sense of well-being that is purely pharmacological, and thus unnatural.
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