Introduction: The Medical Maverick.

One of the most controversial and yet most influential individuals in the history of medicine is Samuel Hahnemann. In an age where medical treatments were invasive, dangerous and in many ways harmful, he introduced a new philosophy: that medical care could be gentle, patient-specific and that the body possessed the ability to heal itself. His ideas were the basis of what has developed into the practice of homeopathy, still a recognized form of medicine today.

At the time, typical medical procedures included bleeding, purging and mercury poisoning. There were no modern day clinical trials, and medical science had no standards, so physicians relied upon tradition rather than evidence to aid their patients. They actually made many of them worse. Hahnemann called for a new form of practice based upon observation.

The two main theories upon which his work is based is the concept that 'like cures like' – that a substance which causes illness in a healthy person can, when in microscopic doses, cure an illness with identical symptoms in a sick person – and that all treatment must be patient specific due to the individual's physical, emotional and environmental differences. The ideas of minimum dosage to cause as little harm as possible and diligent and precise observation, also come from Hahnemann.

More than just scientific theory, Hahnemann was a human physician, one who cared deeply about the plight of his patients when medicine was otherwise a more distant and uncaring practice. He has been both widely accepted and widely criticized for his ideas.

The legacy of Samuel Hahnemann therefore isn't so much about the medicine itself, but more about a whole new style of healing that was to become medicine.

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