He then proceeded to verify his theory by actual experiment. First upon himself and then upon all healthy persons who would join him in these self-sacrificing labors, he proved the effects of a number of drugs. Then, cautiously, first in his own family, and then, little by little, in his general practice, which he had now resumed, he gave, as occasion offered, the drugs which he had proved, in cases of disease that presented symptoms similar to those produced by the drugs.
From 1790 to 1895, fifteen years of the prime of his life were devoted to constant, exhausting labors of this nature, during which time he proved on his own person more than sixty drugs; “for,” said he, “when we have to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life, any neglect to make ourselves masters of it becomes a crime!” (1 Dudgeon, Hahnemann’s Lesser Writings). At the end of this period, sure of the truth of the great principle he had discovered- with all the incidental testimony of history to support it-with the positive results of a long experience to confirm it, he presented his views and the results of his labors to the profession in an essay of wonderful logical power, of the utmost moderation in expression, full of almost tender persuasion and of the noblest enthusiasm; (2 Medicine of Experience) and he published at the same time the first part of his Materia Medica. (3 Frag de Vir. Medorrhinum pos) and he published at the same time the first part of his Materia Medica. (3 Frag, de Vir.Medorrhinumpos). Five years later appeared the more elaborate exposition, the “Organon”.
This was the turning-point of Hahnemann’s career. Let us see what was his relation to the profession at this time.
He had, by universal consent, attained a position in the profession which justified him in assuming to criticise prevailing methods and to suggest improvements. He has shown the need of improvements, and he had borne testimony to his honesty in this exposition, by retiring from a lucrative practice. He now came before the profession saying, “I believe I have discovered a system which will render the practice of medicine certain, and its success brilliant. I have labored fifteen year to test my discovery. My own experiments and the testimony furnished by the records of medicine convince me of its truth. I lay it and then before you, my colleagues, and I conjure you in the name of truth, by the interests of humanity, to investigate it candidly and without prejudice.” “If,’ he says in his letter to Hugeland on this occasion, “if experience should show you that my method is the best, then make use of it for the benefit of mankind, and give God the glory?”
How were this exposition and appeal received by the medical men of the day?
In 1811, appeared the Anti-Organon of Prof. Hecker-a work full of the most bitter aspersions upon Hahnemann’s personal character, whereas, in fact, the question had relation to principles and not to persons; abounding in the most concentrated contempt and scorn of the system which Hahnemann had unfolded; and without a single suggestion to investigate, by practical experiment, the practical method which Hahnemann had stated to have been attended, in his hands, with such brilliant practical success!
And from that day to the present, all the utterances of the Old school, whether from the press, the council, the professor’s chair, or in the forum of the academy, have been bitter personal denunciations and aspersion of the character and motives of Hahnemann, and of all who have adopted or have even shown a disposition to investigate his method.
But many a scientific discoverer has met with opposition and calumny at the hands of his colleagues. Not to go beyond the ranks of medicine, Harvey was denounced as a quack, because he demonstrated the circulation of the blood! Jenner was scandalized with most persistent violence because he introduced vaccination.
To Hahnemann, however, persecution came nearer home. After he had satisfied himself of the value of his discovery of the true method of medical practice, he resumed the exercise of his profession. His success was more brilliant than it had ever been. His fame as a practitioner grew rapidly, and patients began to come to him from considerable distances. This good fortune excited the envy of his colleagues in Konigslutter, where he then resided. At their instigation, the apothecaries of the place brought a prosecution against him for infringement of the law which forbids to practitioners of medicine the compounding and sale of the remedies they prescribe. For, it must be observed, that, as as inevitable corollary to his new system of practice, Hahnemann had come to prescribe only a single drug at a time, and that he used simple preparations such as could not be obtained in the requisite purity at the apothecaries.’ In vain it was urged that the spirit of the law was not infringed, since Hahnemann himself was an expert apothecary and chemist, and since his remedies were not “compounded,” but simples, and not “sold,” but dispensed gratuitously. The opposition was too strong. He was forbidden to practice, save in accordance with the law alluded
to.
Rather than yield in a matter which he considered essential to the freedom of the physician and to the purity and certainty of his practice, Hahnemann determined to leave Konigslutter; and accordingly, to the delight of his colleagues and of the apothecaries, and to the regret of the citizens, who were loath to lose their benefactor, and a cortege of whom attended his carriage far beyond the gates of the town, he removed to Hamburg.
Here, as he became known and appreciated, the same persecution was revived, and with the same result. He removed to Altona.
In this way, during a period of twenty-two years, from 1799 to 1821, Hahnemann was constrained, by the persecution of this colleagues, under cover of the law, to change his abode at least eleven times. The last place from which he was driven in this manner was Leipzic-a city for which he had a peculiar affection. Here he had pursued his earliest medical studied and met with his first successes. Here he had, in later years, established a college of Homoeopathy, and had lectured to large audiences. In the shady walks and groves that surround the city, he had been wont to spend the evening of each day in social converse with his family and with the students whom he had gathered about him and who took part in his labors of proving drugs.
From this city of his love, the scientific capital of his fatherland, he was now, in the sixty-sixth year of his laborious life, driven away to an asylum offered him in the tiny capital of the tiny Duchy of Anhalt-Coethen!
No wonder that he who for so many years had followed the injunction, “When they persecute you in one city, flee ye to another,” that he who, like the Divine Healer, had gone “about from place to place doing good good and healing all manner of sickness an disease among the people” no wonder that he forgot, under the pressure of this last indignity, that other injunction of the Divine Teacher, to “love them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you,” and that, like Luther, he now bared his hitherto sheathed weapons of satire and invective against those who had striven to hinder his usefulness-who had so cruelly marred his peace and happiness-all save that peace which can never be taken from the man who has within himself the mens sibi conscia recti!” If in this he erred and came short of the Divine example, let him among men who is “pure,” cast the first stone at him!
Time brings its sweet revenges. After a career of honor and usefulness at Coethen, where his ever-increasing fame brought him throngs of patients from all parts of Europe, and a subsequent residence in Paris, where his reputation extorted from the government a license to practice as he pleased, Hahnemann died at Paris in 1843, full of years and honors. Eight years afterward, in 1851, the town council of Leipzic appropriated a beautiful plot of ground as a site for his monument, and the council celebrated officially the uncovering of a costly and beautiful bronze statue of that man, as one of Saxony’s most illustrious sons, whom thirty years before the same council had ignominiously chased from their borders as an unauthorized and illegal Prescriber!
Before we leave this branch of our subject, let us draw one lesson from the story of Hahnemann’s persecutions. All his sufferings might have been avoided, he might have lived in peace and affluence, enjoying consideration among his colleagues and making plenty of money, had he been willing to “yield a little,” to waive the right of dispensing his own medicines, to accommodate his system in various points to suit the notions of his time. The temptation to do this might, by some, be supposed to have been great, for Hahnemann’s family was large, he suffered during his wanderings from the pinching of cruel poverty, and this took from him the leisure so necessary for his studied.
Dr. Dunham graduated from Columbia University with Honours in 1847. In 1850 he received M.D. degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. While in Dublin, he received a dissecting wound that nearly killed him, but with the aid of homoeopathy he cured himself with Lachesis. He visited various homoeopathic hospitals in Europe and then went to Munster where he stayed with Dr. Boenninghausen and studied the methods of that great master. His works include 'Lectures on Materia Medica' and 'Homoeopathy - Science of Therapeutics'.