03/01/2026
What is Homeopathy?
There are two major principles or tenets of homeopathy:
Like Cures Like
The Minimum Dose
These principles are predicated on the belief that the body has an innate healing response, which homeopaths can stimulate and guide by having their patients ingest various homeopathic substances.
Like Cures Like
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), the founder of homeopathy, believed that many of the symptoms produced when we are sick are the body’s healing response to an illness. He observed that many substances could induce responses that mimicked this healing response in healthy people. So, his first principle established that in order for a disease to be treated homeopathically, the individual should be given a medicine that will stimulate symptoms similar to those that the ill person produces in the healing response. The homeopathic medicine that an individual is given will induce symptoms in a healthy person that are similar to the disease or illness, thus stimulating the body’s innate healing response, helping them overcome the illness.
The Minimum Dose
Hahnemann’s second principle recognized that to safely activate your body’s response to the disease and not overwhelm it, you only need a minimum (small) dose. Usually a patient seeing a homeopathic physician will be given this minimal dose (which is usually derived from a plant, animal or mineral) in the form of a pellet, pill, granule or liquid.
