For the sceptics…

PEOPLE OFTEN SAY … Homeopathy? It’s nothing but a bottle of water! Sadly, this is a widely held view. Echoing this, the Académie de Médecine (in France), once asked Guizot to exclude Hahnemann, who was the founder of homeopathy. And how did the minister respond? Simply, “Hahnemann is a scholar of great merit. Science must be free for everyone.

If homeopathy is a chimera, or a system without any substance, it will fall by itself. If, on the contrary, it is progress, it will spread in spite of all our efforts to stop it, and the Académie should be the first to wish this, its mission being to encourage discovery and further the advancement of science.”

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The father of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann himself, found himself faced with stern opposition from colleagues and even more so from the apothecaries, who felt that he was undermining the foundations of their profession: since he was recommending the use of small doses and was against multiple prescriptions, this new medicine was perceived as a serious threat to their profits.

He was also accused of dispensing his own medicines and administering them to his patients, which was illegal at the time. He was thus arrested in Leipzig in 1820, convicted, and forced to leave the city. He later obtained special permission from Grand Duke Ferdinand to practise homeopathy in Köthen, where he continued to work, write, and instruct his followers who were swiftly increasing in numbers and spreading their wings further afield. At his death in 1843, homeopathy was known in most European countries, as well as in the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and Russia, and not long after his death India and South America.