World Homeopathy Day Date in the current year: April 10, 2024

Although the adherents of homeopathy claim that its origins can be traced back to Hippocrates, the general consensus is that the longest established alternative medicine to come out of Europe was created by Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann was born on April 10, 1755 in Meissen. His father was a porcelain designer, but Hahnemann didn’t follow in his footsteps and chose to study languages instead. For a number of years, he made his living as a language tutor and translator.

Hahnemann was also interested in medicine. He began his medical studies in Leipzig, continued them in Vienna, and eventually graduated with honors from the University of Erlangen at age 24. He practiced medicine for several years, but eventually became disillusioned with ineffective and harmful approaches and practices such as bloodletting.

Around 1784, Hahnemann gave up his practice and began working on new treatment methods. He began publishing articles about the homeopathic approach in 1796, but the term “homeopathy” was first used in 1807. The doctrine of Hahnemann’s ideas of homeopathy, entitled Organon of the Art of Healing, was first published in 1810.

Hahnemann’s theory achieved its greatest popularity in the first half of the 19th century, but the new scientific knowledge contradicted homeopathy, which eventually led to it being forgotten. The “second birth” of homeopathy occurred in the 1970s due to the rise of the New Age movement with its strong focus on healing through alternative medicine.

Homeopathy practitioners use highly diluted substances selected based on the doctrine called “like cures like” (similia similibus curentur); they believe that symptoms of a disease in sick people can be cured by substances that cause similar symptoms in healthy people. Active substances used in homeopathic remedies are diluted so heavily that the final product often does not contain a single molecule of the original substance.

There’s a lack of scientific evidence that supports the efficacy of homeopathy. The perceived effectiveness of homeopathic treatments can be explained by either natural recovery or the placebo effect (or a combination of both). Although homeopathic remedies may not cause any immediate harm, they may harm patients indirectly because people who rely solely on homeopathy do not seek other treatments, which may lead to the exacerbation of their health conditions.

Despite the fact that the principles of homeopathy contradict evidence-based medicine, and the scientific community regards homeopathy as a pseudoscience, this type of alternative medicine is popular in many countries, and the world homeopathic market is worth billions of dollars a year. So it is not surprising at all that there exists World Homeopathy Daythat aims to popularize it even more.