On Malaria and Homeopathy

It’s Friday, and we are glad to present another installment of our “the good old days…” feature.
BBC News reminds us to celebrate this weekend the 250th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Hahnemann, the father of homeopathy:

Taking arnica for bruising or apis mel for bee stings has become second nature for many people.
But few of those with homeopathic remedies in their cupboards know that they have a German physician to thank for the remedies.
This weekend, supporters of homeopathy are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Hahnemann – the man widely accepted as the founder of homeopathy.
Homeopathy today is one of the most popular and widely used complementary therapies with about 100,000 physicians using it globally.
According to John Saxton, president of the faculty of homeopathy which promotes the academic and scientific development of the discipline, they effectively laid the foundation stone for the creation of homeopathy.
“He took a dose of Peruvian Bark – four drams – and developed all the symptoms of malaria apart from the fever.
“For as long as he continued to take the bark, he had the symptoms and when he stopped it, they stopped.
“It set him thinking.”
Dr Hahnemann came to the conclusion that it was the very fact that quinine produced symptoms so similar to malaria itself that made it a useful medicine – in effect he discovered that like can be used to fight like.
As Dr Hahnemann said himself: “Every effective drug provokes in the human body a sort of disease of its own, and the stronger the drug, the more characteristic, and the more marked and more violent the disease.
“We should imitate nature which sometimes cures a chronic affliction with another supervening disease, and prescribe for the illness we wish to cure, especially if chronic, a drug with the power to provoke another, artificial disease, as similar as possible, and the former disease will be cured: fight like with like.”

The working week is over. Thanks for stopping by to learn–together with us–some of the most exciting developments in medical technologies. We’ll see you next week!