This system is based mainly on the principle that the cure for a particular disease is achieved through the use of pharmaceutical substances that, when administered to a healthy person, produce the similar symptoms as those of the disease in question. For example, it is well known that Belladonna causes mydriasis , that is to say dilation of the pupil of the eye. In a case of mydriasis the homeopathic doctor will probably give Belladonna, in a highly diluted potency, in order to restore the pupil to its normal state. Another example is digitalis which, whereas it is used in conventional medicine to suppress episodes of paroxysmic ventricular tachycardia is, however, and precisely because of this action, made use of in homeopathy for the cure of bradycardia, with a weak pulse and a tendency to faint, irregular breathing, general exhaustion, anorexia, tendency to vomit, and vomiting that does not relieve sick feeling, sensitivity in the epigastrium., cold skin etc… this can be a symptomatology that fits not only with heart disease but with a chronic disturbance of the liver or an infectious hepatitis or an asthmatic crisis etc.
This principle was formulated by Hahnemann with the Latin motto ‘simila similibus curentur’. Similars are cured with similars. Hahnemann believed this to be one of the fundamental laws of cure. The idea had first been mentioned by Hippocrates3, then by Paracelsus, and later by others.
And while conventional medicine believes that it must fight the disease bearing factor which it sees as the main cause for disease, homeopathy believes that it must strengthen the organism’s defence mechanism in order to be able to fight the imbalance.