Malaria row inspired homeopathy
Taking arnica for bruising or apis mel for bee stings has become second nature for many people.
But few of those with homeopathic remedies in their cupboards know that they have a German physician to thank for the remedies.
This weekend, supporters of homeopathy are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Hahnemann - the man widely accepted as the founder of homeopathy.
Homeopathy today is one of the most popular and widely used complementary therapies with about 100,000 physicians using it globally.
Medical
In the UK today there are five NHS homeopathic hospitals and the global sale of homeopathic medicines represents more than £1bn globally.
But the very concept might never have been discovered had it not been for Dr Hahnemann, who was born in Meissen, Germany, in 1755.
Fight like with like
Dr Samuel Hahnemann
After training in sciences and botany he qualified as a doctor.
But he soon became dissatisfied with the medicine of the day, feeling that the purges and bleeding of the period were excessive and harmful.
He was so disillusioned that at one stage he even quit medicine to work as a translator.
But, ironically it was while translating medical texts that he made his biggest breakthrough - the realisation that taking quinine to treat malaria produced the same symptoms as the illness itself.
Dr Hahnemann found a piece by another doctor, Cullen, who was examining the use of quinine (which he referred to as Peruvian Bark) to treat malaria - or Marsh Fever as it was then known.
Dr Cullen said the bark was successful because of its astringent and purgative properties.
But Dr Hahenmann took issue with this. He argued that other medicines had the same properties - but had no effect on malaria.
To prove his point, he decided to experiment with quinine, taking the drug himself.
The results were to prove hugely significant.
Key idea
According to John Saxton, president of the faculty of homeopathy which promotes the academic and scientific development of the discipline, they effectively laid the foundation stone for the creation of homeopathy.
Hahneman put the patient as an individual at the centre of healthcare
Johjn Saxton
"He took a dose of Peruvian Bark - four drams - and developed all the symptoms of malaria apart from the fever.
"For as long as he continued to take the bark, he had the symptoms and when he stopped it, they stopped.
"It set him thinking."
Dr Hahnemann came to the conclusion that it was the very fact that quinine produced symptoms so similar to malaria itself that made it a useful medicine - in effect he discovered that like can be used to fight like.
As Dr Hahnemann said himself: "Every effective drug provokes in the human body a sort of disease of its own, and the stronger the drug, the more characteristic, and the more marked and more violent the disease.
"We should imitate nature which sometimes cures a chronic affliction with another supervening disease, and prescribe for the illness we wish to cure, especially if chronic, a drug with the power to provoke another, artificial disease, as similar as possible, and the former disease will be cured: fight like with like."
Inspiration
Dr Hahnemann also became involved in experimenting in diluting substances, including poisonous metallic elements mercury and arsenic.
His aim was to derive their benefits, while avoiding their side-effects.
His ideas spread quickly following the publication of his book The Organon Of The Medical Art in 1810, which attracted both admiration and hostility.
Dr Frederic Quin brought the idea of homeopathy to Britain and the British aristocracy became early admirers.
In 1849 Dr Quin founded the London Homeopathic Hospital (now the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital).
This is due to be reopened next month following an £18m refurbishment.
To celebrate Dr Hanhnemann's anniversary there will be a number of events throughout Germany as well as an exhibition on him and his followers at the British Homeopathic Association and Faculty of Homeopathy's offices.
Mr Saxton said: "Hahnemann put the patient as an individual at the centre of healthcare and believed that factors in a person's life, such as emotional influences, had a fundamental impact on their well-being.
"That was revolutionary thinking then and it still sounds very relevant to us today."
2. Love is in the air
By Thomas Kielinger
In Windsor
German journalist Thomas Kielinger visits Windsor to observe the town's preparations for the forthcoming royal wedding and finds a less jaundiced view of the occasion than that displayed by the British press.
It is a strange sensation for me to be actually standing at the foot of the statue of Queen Victoria with Windsor Castle's imposing structure right behind it, and to muse about the event that has captured the world's attention for weeks and months - if not years - the marriage of one Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor to his bride, Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles.
People have been rushing to buy souvenirs of the wedding
So inured are we to the constant drip-feed of salacious news from the production line of the Windsor saga that I, for one, am having a hard time liberating myself from the mass of media coverage and developing something of a coherent view of what this event might betoken for the monarchy and its subjects.
Pondering my plight, I chance into a souvenir shop on Windsor High Street, where I browse around the bric-a-brac of royal memorabilia to knock my thoughts into shape.
The first thing that strikes me is that nowhere is there a single item with Camilla Parker Bowles alone on display. She is on sale only in conjunction with her new husband, never on her own.
Whereas Diana Spencer, unforgettable Princess of Wales, beams at you from hundreds of items sparkling with her uniquely iconic lustre.
Humbled and enlightened
Thus, for starters, I can't help asking myself if the British people will ever forgive Charles and Camilla for the role they played, willingly or unwillingly, in Diana's sad undoing.
Charles and Camilla will honeymoon in Scotland
Can people ever be comfortable with King Charles III and Queen Camilla, when someone with far more glamour and charisma might still be commanding the nation's rapt attention?
It doesn't take long before the lady at the till in the Windsor Craft and Woollen Centre despatches my doubts with a vengeance.
"They are so well matched, aren't they?" Mrs Dillon divines, in true vox pop fashion.
Not a word of remonstration or backward-looking does she utter as we descend into a proper psychoanalysis of the royal couple.
I feel both humbled and enlightened at the hands of my guide. As a media person, I am congenitally wedded to the view that newsworthiness comes mostly from things that go wrong, rarely the other way around.
This wedding in particular is a case in point - lurching as it did from mishap to mishap right up to the last days of the preparations, when a ghastly security breach at Windsor Castle was exposed by a tabloid newspaper.
The media have had a field day doing the two protagonists down.
As a matter of fact, I have rarely seen such malicious glee on display in the British newspapers.
Saving paradox
But Mrs Dillon, bless her, is totally unfased about all this negative hullaballoo.
After all, it is people like her who determine the way ahead for even an ancient institution such as the monarchy.
Love Actually was the most successful British film of 2003
And what is the demotic password my goodly lady has come up with? Love, actually, as in the film of the same name starring Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley and other screen luminaries.
Love, actually, also seems to save the day for Charles and Camilla in the eyes of other people I talked to after I had emerged from my education lesson at the hands of Mrs Dillon.
Quite a paradox, when you come to think about it.
It has been said that the Royal Family is mired in dysfunctionality and that the only person really up to the "top job" is its current holder, the Queen, who has stayed the course with exemplary stoicism, albeit at times somewhat inflexibly.
After her the deluge, more or less. Charles' erratic curriculum vitae did not bode well for the future of the monarchy.
Well, what do you know. Now steadfastness rules the day, the very elevating spectacle of a couple true to their love over many a decade.
Dysfunctional? Let the media learn to adjust their radar screens.
Here is one story that has, against all odds, come right, through the slings and arrows of outrageous missteps, blind alleys and cruel misjudgements.
Peace, finally
Yes, of course, Diana was a victim, of her own machinations as well as at the hands of others, including these two happy-enders.
But as a legend in their own right Charles and Camilla have emerged with the paradoxical virtue of long-lasting fidelity.
Dysfunctional? I should think not. Anything but.
In Germany, to where I report, the royals are sometimes adored beyond all reasonableness, just as in Britain they are often unreasonably debunked for their remoteness from ordinary life and their own higgledy-piggledy lives.
Well, at least with this couple you can forget about both fawning and debunking.
Camilla seems a supremely natural and down-to-earth woman, a boon for the monarchy because of the very absence of that double-edged attribute, celebrity, which so overwhelmingly characterised Diana Spencer.
In turn, I see in Charles the contours of a man finally at peace with himself. Love, actually, may be the greatest strength of this much-maligned prince.
What an outcome of a life story so far riddled with, nay, mangled by tragedy. Who would want to wish the royal couple anything but continuing happiness?
In the first place, if Charles love Camilla so much, shouldn't involved third party, Diana. Should have married b4 then. Afterall, now it is back to "CC" (not cycle and carriage) and not "CD"(not Christian Dior)
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