Like many forms of alternative medicine, homeopathy evolved from its founder's disillusionment with current medicine practices. In homeopathy's case, the founder was a German medical doctor named Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann.
Although homeopathy is only 205 years old, it is now practiced in a variety of ways, most of which bear little resemblance to what Hahnemann taught. In the public mind the word "homeopathy" has become so vague that for some it means only an "alternative medicine" and for others a combination of homeopathic medicines that you buy in the health food store, one mixture for allergies, another for headache, etc.
Based on his observations, he formulated the so-called PRINCIPLE OF SIMILARITY, which states that a given substance can cure in a diseased person the symptoms that it produces or causes in a healthy person.
Homeopathy is the system of medicine which works on the principle of 'like cures like' (Similia Similibus curanter). This system of holistic healing was founded by Dr.Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician. Hahnemann, who was translating the book on the medicinal properties of drugs, was reading the properties of the medicine Cinchona, when he read that Cinchona cures malaria, because of its bitter taste. Hahnemann was surprised by this statement and when he read on, he found a footnote which said that cinchona poisoning leads to malaria-like symptoms. This set him thinking and he decided to test the medicine of himself. He experienced the symptoms of malaria, by repeatedly taking the Cinchona medicine and after continuing his experiments found that those medicines which cause disease-like symptoms in healthy individuals are capable of curing the diseased individuals. So, homeopathy relies on the Materia Medica - a book containing the properties of medicines, properties which have been proved on healthy individuals. Homeopathic doctors rely on the materia medica as the authority for it contains not empty theories, but details of symptoms which were experienced by hundreds of provers. It is thus a system based on sound principles and as a result of solid experiments.