The first homeopathic remedy was made out of the bark of the Peruvian Cinchona Tree. This is what the drug Quinine, which was and still is used to treat Malaria, was made from.
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, was working as a medical doctor and was translating a text by Cullen about Cinchona bark into German (his native language). While completing this work, he noticed that the text stated that Quinine works on Malaria due to its bitterness and its astringent properties. He did not believe this could be correct, as other medicines which were also bitter and astringent did not work to treat Malaria.
To figure out why Cinchona was an effective treatment, he decided to take the bark himself to see what happened. After his first dose, he experienced the symptoms of Malaria: palpitations, drowsiness, fever, perspiration, nausea, and muscle pain. Any time he took another dose, he experienced the symptoms again. This lead him to the homeopathic principle of "like cures like". The reason Cinchona works to cure Malaria is because it causes similar symptoms in a healthy person.
Hahnemann's experience led him to conduct experiments on many other substances and to develop a systematic way of determining what symptoms different remedies will help with. These are called provings.
Since Hahnemann first discovered how to harness the healing power of Cinchona bark, several thousand remedies have been proven according to the guidelines he set forth.
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