History of Homoeopathy


History of Homoeopathy and biography of Hahnemann in relation to the development of homeopathy science….


BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FOUNDER AND DISCOVERY OF THE SYSTEM OF HOMOEOPATHY.

The importance of the discovery and established by Hahnemann of the Homeopathic truth, and its acceptance by so large a number of the profession and the public, in spite of the erroneous judgment of his labours and the malevolent opposition he encountered, render it a sacred obligation to dissipate the misconceptions, which in many cases, have arisen respecting him and his work. These have proceeded in several instances from ignorance, and in many more have been intentionally spread, without regard to the fact, which is patient to those acquainted with the period at which he lived, that Hahnemann held the first place among the physicians of his time.

SAMUEL HAHNEMANN was born on the 10th of April 1755 at Meissen in Saxony. The father’s means were limited, but he laid the foundation of a good education, so that the boy, who was eager for learning, was in his twelfth year admitted to the State Latin School in the town; and the same tenacity and perseverance, the same ardour which Hahnemann exhibited throughout his whole life, he already showed as a lad making him the favourite of all his teachers. In his fifteenth year, at the boy’s earnest desire, he was sent to the celebrated Prince’s School at Meissen.

Here he received a classical education which gave him that clearness of method on which the foundation of his important philosophical and practical knowledge was laid; and here he learned to employ his mother tongue with a finish and perfection which enabled him to acquire an excellent knowledge of foreign languages, and a brevity and power of expression of his own which has hardly been suppressed to the present day, and in this acquisition of foreign language he obtained a through knowledge of the medical authors of the time.

In the spring of 1775 he left this school with honorable distinction, and went to the University of Leipzig with very insufficient means for entering on so expensive a career, so that he maintained himself in a scanty manner while at the University by translating English works into German and by giving lessons. Few have imagined that the founder of homoeopathy was a poor man from great diligence, must often have suffered want almost to his sixtieth year, and that it was not till his old age that he first began to reap the harvest of his exhausting labours. After two years study at Leipzig he went on foot to Vienna to enjoy the clinical teaching of the them famous Dr. Quarin, who was private physician to the Emperor and of whom he afterwards always thought with gratitude. ” I am indebted to him” he said “for all that a physician could have taught me”.

Owing to his being cheated of his fee by a bookseller to whom he furnished translations, he was, at the end of twelve mouths, compelled to relinquish his studies ar Vienna, and to take an engagements as private physician and librarian to the governor of Transylvania. In this position he found the time requisite to perfect himself both theoretically and practically, and on the 10th of August 1779 to take the degree of doctor of medicine at the University of Erlangen; and his thesis on this occasion, on the causes and treatment of cramp, Confectus adfectum spasmodicorum oetiologicus et therapeutics, shows that his thoroughly scientific, which his enemies have sought to disparage, is incontestable.

After obtaining his degree, he was engaged in busy practice in various States of Germany for ten year, and during this period he had adequate experience of the miserable condition of the practice of medicine and the finally experienced such aversion to the prevailing methods that he almost entirely relinquished active practice, occupying himself in the literary world in the provinces of chemistry and pharmacy, and succeeding in a brief time to a not unimportant reputation as an author.

Thus, his work on poisoning by Arsenic was declared by universal criticism to be “an excellent and classical work”; another work, on the Distinction between Genuine and Adulterated Drugs, was without hesitation proclaimed “indispensable to the medical and pharmaceutical knowledge of the time”; his Druggist’s Lexicon become esteemed as “classic”; his Guide to the Treatment of Suppurating Wounds and Ulcers was praised by Critics as “thorough and well written”; not less his Instruction to Surgeons on Venereal Disease was noted as”the work of a man of intelligence and education” and as exhibiting “wealth of knowledge and maturity of judgment”.

In the province of chemistry he also displayed practical skill and discovered a method for the detection of the adulterations of wine which become known as Hahnemann’s wine test; and one of the best preparations of mercury to this day nears his name as Mercurius solubilis Hahnemanni. Turning over the pages of the scientific journals of that time one finds Hahnemann always mentioned by his contemporaries with not only the greatest respect but even the highest commendation, as, for example,”the meritorious, estimable Hahnemann”, this famous scientific chemist”, “this physician matured in experience and judgment, “this skilled observer, and able and successful physician’; and this occurred as a time when it was said that greater enmity existed among professional men than could be found at any previous or subsequent period.

But by degree, as he progressed with his reform, this hatred in advance so obstructed Hahnemann in his independence become very obnoxious to the private physician of the recently deceased Emperor Leopold the Second of Austria, when Hahnemann openly charged him with being the cause of his death from the employment of excessive blood-letting in pleurisy. Hahnemann was called unjust and unprofessional, but no physician of the present day would venture to make four copious bleeding within twenty-four hours from an old man like the Emperor Leopold, and everyone must now agree with Hahnemann. Beside this, he protested against the practice at that time employed with the insane, whom the doctors and attendants treated as wild beasts. He announced “that he would never punish a maniac with blows or any other painful corporal punishment for invalids of this description required pity, and their disorders instead of being benefited, were always much aggravated by cruelty.” This opinion, enunciated by Hahnemann nearly a century ago, has it is well known, only met with universal medical acceptance for about thirty years.

In addition to this, he opposed the medical traditions of his contemporaries, and called on them “to free themselves from the shallowness, the indecision and the fallacies of the ancient teachers of materia medica and to throw off the yoke of ignorance and superstition.” Above all, he insisted the physician should not prescribe several remedies mixed together, but should ascertain with exactitude which medicines should be ordered in each case and prescribed only that one at a time. “The mind of man” said he “can only grasp one single object at once. How then can it bring the art of healing to a certainly if against one diseases alone a compound of various powers in intentionally employed, of which not one ingredient has its action by itself pound prescription is therefore an obstacle to the art of healing.”

The physician does not sufficiently distinguish between each individual case of diseases, and hence seeks help in a combination of remedies, where with the little light he has become thick darkness. Can this be the royal road to the temple of truth?” In addition to this Hahnemann particularly condemned the practice of bleeding, which at that time was in use in so many disorders;he protested against the use of purgatives, and challenged his contemporaries to obtain information of the action of medicines by testing on healthy persons. These attempts at reformation become by degree more objectionable to the profession, and if Hahnemann was not met with open contradiction, the press, which had previously extolled him, become silent.

He however, proceeded undeterred on his path, and proclaimed these novel and important propositions.

1. What is the pure action of each medicine in its different doses in health on the human subject?

2. What does the observation of this action teach in each case of simple and of complicated disease?

He thus required a physiological materia medica. BUt the setting up of the law of similars as a basis for treatment, he had not yet arrived at; he demanded, instead of the purposeless methods in vogue, an investigation of the action of each medicine obtained on the healthy human subjects as well as its relation to each organ of the body as regards the primary and secondary action; and he hoped by these proving to the obtain the correction of many accepted errors which had existed respecting the mode of action of drugs.

Thus for example, m he investigated the action of peruvian bark as a proof of his theory, for it was at that time believed that its curative influence in ague resulted from tonic action on the stomach; Hahnemann, on the other hand, asserted that “Substances which excite a species of fever, as very strong coffee, arsenic, ignatia & c, destroy the types of ague.” This assertion depended on practical experience, for with four drachms of Peruvian bark which he had taken he had produced symptoms resembling those of intermittent fever, but he expressly observes “without actual cold shivering”; he did not say the the produced an actual fever by, “beating in the head, palpitation of the heart, redness of the cheeks, dullness of the senses hard and rapid pulse, depression & c.”

Emilia Foster-Spinelli