1799 - Prevention of scarlet fever
   
   Discovery of Homoeopathy was first communicated to the world through Hufeland's Journal in 1796 .It was during his residence at Konigslutter. Meanwhile vaccination for small pox was popular. Edward Jenner advocated the cow pox vaccine to generate immunity against small pox. In 1799 there was an epidemic out burst of scarlet fever at Konigslutter which was successfully treated and prevented by Hahnemann.

   The first reflection of Hahnemann concentrated on the fact that two diseases may interact in very particular ways in the same individual, with one temporarily or permanently taking the place of another. One example is the well-known alternation of eczema and asthma as chronic expressions of an allergic constitution. Hahnemann studied the less known lasting replacement of one disease by another. He observed that a chronic skin rash disappeared after the onset of measles. He wondered what it was that led to this difference between temporary and permanent replacement, and became convinced that the latter occurred when the two diseases had similar symptoms.

Hufeland

Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland

   His next step was to try to apply this finding in a systematic and therapeutic manner. As he was also an expert in chemistry, he was familiar with many of the symptoms caused by toxic agents and aware of the fact that a number of naturally occurring diseases closely resemble symptoms owing to intoxication: e.g. the intoxication induced by Belladonna resembles scarlet fever; that induced by quinine resembles malaria; and that induced by arsenic resembles cholera. It did not take him long to combine the idea of the replacement of similar diseases with that of the replacement induced by 'artificial' intoxication:

   Hahnemann was very successful both in the prevention and treatment of Scarlet fever and “The Prophylactic Power of Belladonna," was published. When his 10 year old daughter was suffered from scarlet fever he gave her, the one four hundred and thirty-two thousandth part of a grain of Belladonna, with the result that in about twenty four hours she became well. He next gave the remedy to other children, who did not take the disease although exposed.

Atropa Belladonna

   The profound analogies between homoeopathic thought and immunology are due to the fact that the whole of homoeopathic theory is substantially based on the principle of regulating endogenous systems of healing, the best known of which is certainly the immune system and its neuroendocrine integrations. 'Hahnemann principle, according to our present way of thinking, was not bad at all' and 'The concept that the sick person reacts differently to medications than the healthy one, which had to be established empirically by therapeutic trials, also played a role in Hahnemann's thinking' Hahnemann's principles of homoeopathy were not totally new as traces of them can be found throughout the history of medicine.