The word Homeopathy (or Homoeopathy) is derived from the Greek words homoios, meaning like or similar, and pathos, meaning suffering or disease.

Homeopathy is a system of medical therapeutics for treating people and animals on the basis of the principle of "similae" or "simile." The great homeopathic principle is (in Latin) "Similia similibus curentur," meaning "Let like be treated by like." Indeed, Homeopathy finds its first roots recorded in the writings of Hippocrates (c.470-400 bc), the "Father of Medicine," wherein he espoused that healing is found in the methods of "contraries" and "similars." Hippocrates wrote that "Disease is eliminated through remedies able to produce similar symptoms." These ideas were later rediscovered by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) a medical physician who, through a process of experimental and scientific discovery, largely developed what Homeopathic medicine is today.

Indeed, Hahnemann demonstrated that homeopathic principles of simile and potency could cure typhoid and cholera exceptionally better than the conventional medicine of his day (Cholera and typhoid were then epidemic in Europe because of 3 major wars, namely, the Seven Years' War, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars). Hahnemann himself healed 180 cases of typhus with only one fatality. And one of his pupils lost only six cholera patients among 154 treated, whereas in the same town, of the 1500 patients treated by orthodox methods, 55% (825 people) died.

Later, in 1854 in Britain, a cholera epidemic was stopped in Homeopathic hospitals with only a 16.4% death rate compared to that of a 51.8% death rate at other hospitals practicing conventional medicine. Homeopathic medicine and the principle of simile was protected by law by the British Parliament, and later protected by the United States Congress as a practical and legitimate method of medical practice. Today, unlike nutritional substances, Homeopathic substances are considered medicines, recognized as powerful entities which allow specific medical claims to be made about them.

The Similae Principle - The Basis of Homeopathy:
The principle of "Similae" or simile is the principle that certain substances (herbs, minerals, inorganic salts and other organic materials, etc.) in full strength yield the same symptoms as does a known disease, and that those same substances when "potentised" (or diluted and vigorously agitated or "succussed") can provide relief of those same symptoms. Titrated dilutions and succussions of a particular substance can often be the means to bring relief from diseases which cause the same symptomology as that which the identical substance in full strength causes (be it herb, mineral or other organic material).

To give an example of the simile principle, the effects of peeling an onion are very similar to the symptoms of acute coryza (flu-type cold). And the homeopathic remedy prepared from Allium Cepoa (the Red Onion) is used to treat this very type of cold. In yet another example, the symptoms and signs of acute arsenic poisoning are very similar to the symptoms seen in certain cases of gastroenteritis. And true to the principle of simile, Homeopathic potencies of Arcenicum (arsenic) are used to effectively treat gastroenteritis.

Thus, we may well have been using principles of Homeopathy in conventional medicine without even being aware of it. Each time we are treated with something in a diluted potency, which in its full strength or stronger potency is known to cause similar symptoms, we are using the principle of "similars," or simile. More accurately, whenever an identical substance is used in a weaker potency to treat the symptoms that a stronger potency has caused, it is called isopathy in conventional medicine. Falling within this definition, a mild potency of penicillin is used to clear up an allergic rash caused by full strength penicillin. Vaccinations can be said to follow the simile principle in isopathy as well. A diluted and weakened strain of a microbe can effect the body's immune system and strengthen it so as to defend against disease.

Likewise, small dosages of X-Rays and radium can help treat cancer, but stronger dosages of X-Rays and radium will cause cancer as well. And, some of the treatments of immunological and allergic reactions are dependent on the use of diluted tissue products, or "sera," derived from infected or sensitized individuals to produce a response in the patient to that very infection or sensitizing agent. Whenever we treat a sick person by using a method or a drug which can cause a similar picture of symptoms in other persons, we apply the homeopathic principle, whether we know it or not. Again, it seems that the principle of "simile," or "Let like be treated by like," is used more often than realized.

The notions that the body may be aided in its endeavors to cure the disorder and disharmony responsible for disease by application of the principles of simile may have seemed ridiculous to the men of Hahnemann's generation, but in the face of increasing knowledge in the areas of molecular medicine, biology, immunology and subatomic physics, it is certainly not absurd today.