Editing Samuel Hahnemann (section)

===Creation of homeopathy===
{{Main article|Homeopathy}}
Hahnemann was dissatisfied with the state of medicine in his time, and particularly objected to practices such as [[bloodletting]]. He claimed that the medicine he had been taught to practice sometimes did the patient more harm than good:
<blockquote>My sense of duty would not easily allow me to treat the unknown pathological state of my suffering brethren with these unknown medicines. The thought of becoming in this way a murderer or malefactor towards the life of my fellow human beings was most terrible to me, so terrible and disturbing that I wholly gave up my practice in the first years of my married life and occupied myself solely with [[chemistry]] and writing.<ref name="skylarkbio"/></blockquote>

After giving up his practice around 1784, Hahnemann made his living chiefly as a writer and translator, while resolving also to investigate the causes of medicine's alleged errors. While translating [[William Cullen]]'s ''A Treatise on the Materia Medica'', Hahnemann encountered the claim that [[cinchona]], the bark of a Peruvian tree, was effective in treating [[malaria]] because of its astringency. Hahnemann believed that other astringent substances are not effective against malaria and began to research cinchona's effect on the human body by self-application. Noting that the drug induced malaria-like symptoms in himself,<ref>Haehl, vol. 1, p.38; Dudgeon, p.48</ref> he concluded that it would do so in any healthy individual. This led him to postulate a healing principle: "that which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms."<ref name="skylarkbio"/> This principle, ''like cures like'', became the basis for an approach to medicine which he gave the name [[homeopathy]]. He first used the term homeopathy in his essay ''Indications of the Homeopathic Employment of Medicines in Ordinary Practice'', published in [[Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland|Hufeland]]'s ''Journal'' in 1807.<ref>Gumpert, Martin (1945) ''Hahnemann: The Adventurous Career of a Medical Rebel'', New York: Fischer, p. 130.</ref>