[4] As a young man, Hahnemann became proficient in a number of languages, including English, French, Italian, Greek and Latin.

He eventually made a living as a translator and teacher of languages, gaining further proficiency in "Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic and Hebrew".

[9] Hahnemann's thesis was titled Conspectus adfectuum spasmodicorum aetiologicus et therapeuticus [A Dissertation on the Causes and Treatment of Spasmodic Diseases].

[5]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.

He first used the term homeopathy in his essay Indications of the Homeopathic Employment of Medicines in Ordinary Practice, published in Hufeland's Journal in 1807.

His researches led him to agree with von Störck that the toxic effects of ingested substances are often broadly parallel to certain disease states,[18] and his exploration of historical cases of poisoning in the medical literature further implied a more generalised medicinal "law of similars".

His more systematic experiments with dose reduction really commenced around 1800–01 when, on the basis of his "law of similars," he had begun using Ipecacuanha for the treatment of coughs and Belladonna for scarlet fever.

Of the Organon, Robert Ellis Dudgeon states it "was an amplification and extension of his "Medicine of Experience", worked up with greater care, and put into a more methodical and aphoristic form, after the model of the Hippocratic writings.

Mr William Herbert Tankard-Hahnemann, the great-great-great-grandson of Samuel Hahnemann died on 12 January 2009 (his 87th birthday) after 22 years of active patronage of the British Institute of Homeopathy.