(also spelled homœopathy or homoeopathy) from the Greek words hómoios (similar) and páthos (suffering), is a system of alternative medicine that strives to treat "like with like" [the etymological origin of the word homeopathy: 'similar suffering' Homeopathy is one type of alternative medicine, being particularly popular in Europe and India, although less so in the USA, where such therapies have been subject to tighter regulation. Recently, even stricter European regulations were also implemented by the EDQM.

Homeopathy rests on the premise of treating sick persons with extremely diluted agents that - in undiluted doses - are deemed to produce similar symptoms in a healthy individual. Its adherents and practitioners assert that the therapeutic potency of a remedy can be increased by serial dilution of the drug, combined with succussion or vigorous shaking. In common with allopathic medicine, homeopathy regards diseases as morbid derangements of the organism.

However, it differs in preferring to view each case of sickness as a strictly individual phenomenon.[6] The term "homeopathy" was coined by the Saxon physician Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) and first appeared in print in 1807.[7], although he had previously outlined his axiom of medical similars in a series of articles and monographs commencing in 1796.