 Remedies using animal and plant substances
Homeopathy is based on the Principle of Similars' or let likes cure likes'.
The term "homeopathy" was coined by the German physician Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann in 1807.
Hahnemann believed symptoms induced by a given homeopathic remedy in a group of healthy individuals will cure a similar set of symptoms in the sick.
Symptoms and remedies are determined by "provings", in which healthy volunteers are given remedies, often in miniscule doses, and the resulting physical, mental and spiritual symptoms observed.
Hahnemann first tested substances commonly used as medicines in his time, such as Antimony and Rhubarb, and also poisons such as Arsenic, Mercury and Belladonna.
He recorded his first provings of 27 drugs in the Fragmenta de viribus in 1805 and later in his Materia Medica Pura.
Homeopathic practitioners today tend to rely on the Homeopathic "Materia Medicae", comprising alphabetical indexes of "Drug Pictures" organised by remedy and describe the symptoms associated with individual remedies.
Today, around 3000 remedies are used in homeopathy; about 300 are based on comprehensive Materia Medica information, around 1500 on relatively fragmentary knowledge and the rest are used experimentally in difficult cases.
Homeopathy uses many animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic substances. Examples include Natrum muriaticum (table salt), Lachesis muta (the venom of the bushmaster snake), Opium, and Thyroidinum (thyroid hormone).
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