Homoeopathy Similia Similibus Curentur Homoeopathy from the Greek words όμοιος, hómoios (similar) and πάθος, páthos (suffering, is a form of alternative medicine that attempts to treat "like with like." The term "homeopathy" was coined by the Saxon physician Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) and first appeared in print in 1807, although he had previously outlined his axiom of medical similars in a series of articles and monographs commencing in 1796.Homeopathy rests on the priciples of treating sick persons with extremely diluted agents (homoeopathic medicines) that are deemed to produce similar symptoms in a healthy individual in both undiluted and diluted doses. The therapeutic potency of a remedy can be increased by serial dilution of the drug , combined with succussion or homogenous shaking known as drug dynamization or potentization. In common with conventional medicine, homeopathy regards diseases as morbid derangements of the organism. However, homeopathy states that instances of disease in different people differ essentially.     PRICIPLES OF SIMILIARS  Homeopathy is based on the 'Principle of Similars', first expressed by Hahnemann in the exhortation similia similibus curentur or 'let likes cure likes'. This is the exact opposite of 'contraries' upon which the Galenic medicine of his day was based, which Hahnemann initially practised and in which he had been trained. The 'law of similars' is an ancient medical maxim, but its modern form is based on Hahnemann's conclusion that a constellation of symptoms induced by a given homeopathic remedy in a group of perfectly healthy individuals will cure a similar set of symptoms in the disease individual.    DRUG PROVING  Symptom patterns associated with various remedies are determined by 'provings', in which healthy volunteers are given remedies, often in molecular doses, and the resulting physical, mental and spiritual symptoms are compiled by observers into a 'Drug Picture' in materia medica, which describe the symptom patterns associated with individual remedies. Speaking of the attitude his first proving inspired in him, Hahnemann states: "with this first trial broke upon me the dawn that has since brightened into the most brilliant day of the medical art; that it is only in virtue of their power to make the healthy human being ill that medicines can cure morbid states, and indeed, only such morbid states are composed of symptoms which the drug to be selected for them can itself produce in similarity on the healthy.