The word homeopathy is a combination of two Greek words: "homoios”, meaning similar and "pathos", which means suffering. Homeopathy is a non-toxic system of medicine used to treat illness and relieve discomfort of a wide variety of health conditions.

Homeopathy was developed in the eighteenth century by a German physician, Dr Samuel Hahnemann. He realized the same things Hippocrates did two thousand years earlier, that there were two ways of treating ill health, the way of opposites and the way of similars. Treatment following the way of opposites will give a patient suffering from insomnia a medicine that brings on artificial sleep. The way of similar, followed by homeopaths, is explained in more detail under How Homeopathy Works.

Homeopathy acts by stimulating the body’s own healing mechanism. It activates the vital energy in our body. The aim of this treatment is to get to a level of wellness or health that you will not require frequent treatments for the same problem.

The nearest equivalent to be found in modern medical practice is vaccination, where the cowpox virus is used against smallpox. Once this virus is injected into a healthy person, the virus stimulates the body to produce its own antibodies and hence immunity against the disease.