Homeopathy has been in existence for over two hundred years, and has an honourable tradition dating back to ancient Greece.
Samuel Hahnemann, a brilliant German doctor, developed the scientific and philosophical foundations of Homoeopathy. In 1796, Hahnemann was translating a medical essay on Peruvian Bark or Cinchona from which quinine, the treatment for malaria, was derived. The man who wrote the original text (Cullen) attributed Cinchona's ability to cure malaria to its bitter properties. Hahnemann was sceptical of this explanation and tested small doses on himself. Those small doses produced symptoms that are characteristic of malaria. In other words, Hahnemann observed that Cinchona produced in a healthy person the symptoms of malaria, the very disease that it was known to cure. During the coming years, he conducted many of these provings on himself, his family, and his friends. He collected this information and set up a medical practice using the information he had gathered. He treated his patients with the "Simillimum" the remedy whose symptom picture (based on the provings) most closely matched that of his patient. His methods were met with disbelief and he was ridiculed by colleagues, but the patients flowed in and the astonishing results that Hahnemann achieved verified his theory. His theories form the basis of successful homoeopathic practice today.