An important idea introduced by Hahnemann and which causes homeopathy to differ from conventional medicine is individualising. He maintained that there are no diseases, but only patients, and therefore a treatment must aim at treating the individual rather than the disease.
Diseases are nothing but the activation and consequent manifestation of the existing predispositions in response to stress.
The totality of the organism`s response under stress creates a pattern of symptomatology that is uniquely individual for that patient. According to this principle, there cannot be generalised treatment for a specefic type of disorder.
According to this idea, ten patients suffering from the same ‘disease’, for example epilepsy, will probably each require a separate pharmaceutical substance, unless the symptoms of two or three of them are identical down to the last detail, a rare but not impossible situation.