“ He had previously felt dissatisfied with the state of the science of medicine, and this observation led him to assert the truth of the “law of similars,” similia similibus curantur or curentur—i.e. diseases are cured (or should be treated) by those drugs which produce symptoms similar to them in the healthy. ”

“ He was educated at the “elector’s school” of Meissen, and studied medicine at Leipzig and Vienna, taking the degree of M.D. at Erlangen in 1779. After practising in various places, he settled in Dresden in 1784, and thence removed to Leipzig in 1789. In the following year, while translating W. Cullen’s Materia medica into German, he was struck by the fact that the symptoms produced by quinine on the healthy body were similar to those of the disordered states it was used to cure. ”

“ He promulgated his new principle in a paper published in 1796 in C. W. Hufeland’s Journal, and four years later, convinced that drugs in much smaller doses than were generally employed effectually exerted their curative powers, he advanced his doctrine of their potentization or dynamization. ”