What is this modality all about.  let's take a look at the origin of the word itself.  It is derived from "homeios" meaning similar and "pathos" meaning illness or disease, thus put together we get "similar disease".  Why was this name chosen?.  Samual Hahnemann was a physician in the late 18th early 19th century who felt his patients weren't getting any better from the treatment of the day.  He felt as if the medicines themselves were making the people sicker than the disease they had contracted.  He felt there had to be a better way.   While he was putting himself through med school and before he had the oppurtunity to translate several old medical texts from the various languages, he was fluent in many languages anf could therefore avail himself to the many texts.  He had seen that in some of these that there was a thread that treated the disease of the patient with a medicinal substance that wen taken by a healthy person would cause symptoms similar to some of the diseases that he recognized.  In addition he saw in his daily practice the generally accepted pharmacological dosing was causing symptoms similar to the diseas that was being treated.  He therefore stated an experiment that was to be the forerunner of modern homeopathy