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Homeopathy, the longest established alternative medicine to come out of Europe, was created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann rejected the mainstream medicine of the late 18th century as irrational and inadvisable because it was largely ineffective and often harmful. He advocated the use of single drugs at lower doses and promoted an immaterial, vitalistic view of how living organisms function. The term homeopathy was coined by Hahnemann and first appeared in print in 1807. He also coined the expression "allopathic medicine", which was used to pejoratively refer to traditional Western medicine.

Hahnemann conceived of homeopathy while translating a medical treatise by the Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen into German. Being skeptical of Cullen's theory that cinchona cured malaria because it was bitter, Hahnemann ingested some bark specifically to investigate what would happen. He experienced fever, shivering and joint pain: symptoms similar to those of malaria itself. From this, Hahnemann came to believe that all effective drugs produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the diseases that they treat. This led to the name "homeopathy", which comes from the Greek: ὅμοιος hómoios, "-like" and πάθος páthos, "suffering".