Hufeland’s emphasis on therapy, bedside doctoring, and the social dimensions of illness were renowned, and led to the opening of Berlin’s first polyclinic for the poor at the Charité.

Hufeland believed that "the very tragedies of poverty were those in which the lack, the pain and the unhappiness together buried the most pernicious diseases and infectious diseases that spread from there to all and higher circles."

Hufeland was a convinced representative of a vitalistic concept of life. He was also a contemporary and close friend of Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy. He helped Hahnemann publish many of his original writings.

Hufeland became a staunch advocate of homeopathy. He wrote (Hufeland, System der Prakt. Heilkunde, 1830):

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The first reason inducing me to write is the fact that I considered it incorrect and unworthy of science to ridicule or persecute the new doctrine of homeopathy… I find suppression and despotism in science repugnant; here, the only rule should be freedom of spirit, basic research, the confutation of hypotheses, the comparison of observations, adherence to facts and not to personalities. Homeopathy must necessarily be contested if it intends to present itself as a general principle of every therapy. In fact, if this affirmation were to be taken literally, it could seem to be the grave of all sciences and human progress. 

But homeopathy is valid as a field of observation and, instead of being repudiated, should be used as a special method of cure, subordinate to the higher concepts of rational medicine. On the basis of my personal observations, I am convinced that it can render a service not rarely, but sometimes in a highly striking manner, particularly after the failure of other treatments. I am not in favor of homeopathy, but of the inclusion of a homeopathic method in rational medicine. I would not speak of homeopathic physicians, but of physicians that use the homeopathic method at the right time and in the right place.