Samuel Hahnemann : A Revolutionary in Medicine.

 Samuel Hahnemann: A Physician Who Made a Difference In the entire history of medicine there can be very few figures who have been both as controversial and as influential as Samuel Hahnemann. In a time when most medical treatments were aggressive, invasive and sometimes fatal he brought forth a fundamentally different view of health and healing centered on the gentleness of treatment, individual attention, and the healing powers of the body, which led to the development of homeopathy, a system of medicine still practiced today in every part of the world. Hahnemann, however, did much more than establish a new system of medicine: he challenged the very foundations of 18th and 19th-century medical theory. At that time bleeding, purging, and potent toxic remedies, including mercury, were the tools of physicians and, in almost all cases, actually sickened patients rather than curing them. There was little empirical evidence or experimentation involved with new treatments, but rather reliance upon traditional dogma; the use of substances based purely on observation and logical assumption (as opposed to clinical trials), for example, was unheard of. Frustrated with this approach, Hahnemann developed a new system based on careful observation, experimentation and logic, starting with the idea of "like cures like," or similia similibus curentur (that which can cause a certain group of symptoms in the healthy can cure that same group of symptoms in the sick). This fundamental premise immediately allowed for a greater level of focus upon detailed symptom patterns and individual care, since each patient even suffering from the same illness was believed to be unique, thus treatments needed to be specific and focus on the physical, emotional and mental condition of the patient. It also led to the idea of the "minimum dose," since such minimal dosages would theoretically not cause the ill patient to suffer from the negative side effects of the remedy. In addition, Hahnemann was an advocate for observation and systematic documentation of the effect of various substances upon humans through "provings" (a sort of early version of clinical trials) and most importantly, he made physicians more compassionate, empathetic and patient-centered. Although homeopathy itself continues to be debated in science today, the broad implications of Hahnemann's philosophy for medical care in general can be viewed as revolutionary, in making medicine an endeavor where one helps the patient heal, rather than a fight to restore health and overall, Samuel Hahnemann contributed significantly to the practice of modern medicine in many ways.

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