Hahnemann, a brilliant scholar, a graduate in Allopathy, a linguist to boot, was disappointed with his practice of Allopathy, and thus took to translating medical books, during the course of winch he came across the statement that the Cinchona Bark(Quinine) is a specific for malaria. He was not satisfied with the reason given for the observation, and being an original thinker who took nothing for granted, he started taking quinine himself and found that he was experiencing symptoms of malaria.
He tried this experiment with his friends and relatives and found that all of them experienced symptoms of malaria. This led him to the path-breaking conclusion that a remedy which can produce certain symptoms in the healthy can cure similar symptoms in the sick individual. He then launched upon a programme of testing numerous medicinal agents on healthy people (men and women) – called “provings”. These proving records, systematically arranged, today constitute the “Materia Medica”. He proved a hundred remedies during his life-time, and today there are about 3000 remedies in the Materia Medica.
He then laid down the principles of this Science which is known as the “Organon of Medicine”, including the rules for using the remedies for curing the sick. This book, of which the Sixth, the final revised edition is the last, is so to say the “Bible” of the Homoeopathic practitioners.
A number of Hahnemann’s followers almost all of them distinguished M.Ds. (Doctors of Medicine) have contributed their experience during the last 200 years, to enrich this Science. It is neither necessary nor possible to deal with their contributions in this small book which is primarily intended to guide the Village Level Health Workers and individual families to carry the benefits and advantages of HOMEOPATHY to the needy suffering humanity. It is enough to know that Hahnemann thus established the LAW OF CURE, viz., “SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR”, which means “Let Likes be cured by Likes.”