Christian Samuel Hahnemann

Christian Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) earned a medical degree from University of Erlangen in Bavaria. He was a gifted linguist, and in his youth, worked as a multi-lingual translator. In 1779, he returned to his home state of Saxony, where he gave up the practice of medicine, again supporting himself as a translator and writer. He became an opponent of therapeutic venesection. While translating William Cullen’s medical textbook into German, Hahnemann learned that the cinchona bark of a Peruvian tree was effective in treating malaria. When he consumed the drug, he developed symptoms that he considered to be analogous to malaria. This became the principle of “similars,” a substance that causes symptoms that resemble those of a particular disease should ameliorate that disease. Around 1801, he began to experiment with the dilution and agitation of medicines to strengthen their effect. He introduced the term “homeopathy” in an 1807 essay. He is buried in Paris.