But although the persecution of Hahnemann is to be regretted for the unfortunate influence it exercised on his doctrines in some respects, yet it is probable that on the whole this persecution was not altogether disadvantageous to the internal development of the new system. The myth of Prometheus chained to the solitary rock with the vulture gnawing at his liver is an emblem of the fate that awaits all who have the presumption to steal celestial fire; they are mostly condemned to solitude, their great minds can find no companionship among the common herd of mankind, and they are incessantly preyed upon by the ever- greedy vulture of envious detraction. Perhaps it is best for the new truths that their discoverers should be so treated. Their isolation and forced retirement from the world enable them to work more constantly at their subject, and to develop it by the light of their own great minds, unswayed by the well-meaning but obstructive aid of self-sufficient but shallow friends, who are generally the most officious and persevering in their injudicious suggestions.
Though, by the enforced intellectual solitude on the part of the discoveries of new truths, the systems they build up may appear to be deficient in catholicity, and to bear too prominently the stamp of their authors, individuality, yet, on the other hand, there is no fear of their truths being lost amid a medley of distracting doubts and irrelevant fancies, that would not fail to suggest themselves to the various minds of a multitude of learned pundits. The persecutions endured by the pioneers of truth serve only to stimulate them more so to work out and perfect their truth, that their very enemies and persecutors shall be forced ultimately to bow down before it. While the sham melts away like snow before the fire or persecution, the truth is only rendered more bright and more compact by it, as the soft iron only becomes steel by passing through the furnace. That Hahnemann felt and felt deeply the unjust calumnies and unceasing persecution to which he was subjected we have ample evidence from various passages in his works from the year 1800 onwards. Among the papers found at his death one bore the following inscription, intended as an epitaph on his tomb, which reads like the last sigh of a martyr — liber tandem quiesco.
Another quality of Hahnemann’s mind, his conscientiousness, is strikingly displayed in his abandoning the lucrative practice of medicine when his faith was shaken in it, and supporting his family for some time upon the proceeds of his chemical
discoveries and by the tenfold greater labour of translating books for the publishers.
This quality is also shown in his refusal to adopt any mode of avoiding the persecutions of the apothecaries, which he might readily have done, either by setting up an apothecary of his own, or by dispensing his medicines trait of conscientiousness which I have not found alluded to elsewhere, is this. After his first discovery of the homoeopathic therapeutic law, he contented himself for some years with making a collection of the morbid effects of various poisonous and medicinal substances from the writings and observations of the more ancient and the modern toxicologists and experimenters. In this way he collected together a tolerable pathogenesis of many powerful substances, and on this basis he endeavored to practice. He published the results of his first trails of his system upon these data in 1796 and the two following years. But he soon found that the records of the toxicologists and others were inadequate to afford him sufficiently accurate pictures of morbid states corresponding to the natural diseases he had to treat, and he saw that there was nothing for it but to test the medicines and poisons accurately, carefully, and systematically upon the healthy individual. As yet he knew not if such trials might not be fraught with danger to his constitution and shorten life; but he did not shrink from what he considered a sacred duty, and he boldly set about the gigantic task — a task, I may safely say, from which any ordinary mind would have recoiled in dismay. How he executed his task I need not relate. The ten volumes of provings he has left us are an eternal monument to his energy, perseverance, conscientiousness, and self-sacrifice, “When,” says he, ” we have to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life, any neglect to make ourselves thoroughly masters of it became a crime! “.
We may from some idea of Hahnemann’s immense industry when we consider that he proved about ninety different medicines, that he wrote upwards of seventy original works on chemistry and medicine, some of which were in several thick volumes, and translated about twenty-four works from the English, French, Italian, and Latin, on chemistry, medicine, agriculture, and general literature, many of which were in more than one volume. Besides this he attended to the duties of an immense practice, corresponding and consulting and those who know the care and time he expended on every case, the accuracy with which he registered every symptom, and the carefulness with which he sought for the proper remedy, will be able to estimate what a Herculean labour a large practice so conducted must have been. When I add that he was an accomplished classical scholar and philologist, and that he had more than a superficial acquaintance with botany, astronomy, meteorology, and geography, we shall be forced to acknowledge that his industry and working powers bordered on the marvellous.
His goodness of heart and generosity appear on various occasions. In the fragment of autobiography I have before alluded to after relating that he was swindled out of the hard-earned gains by means of which he hoped to pursue his medical studies in Vienna, he says that the person who injured him was afterwards sorry for what he had done, so he freely forgives him, and will not mention either his name of the circumstances of the transaction. His enemies and some of his professed friends have accused him of
avarice, founding this charge on the fact that he demanded high fees, made his corresponding patients pay for the consultation on receipt of the letter, and that he lived in a style not suited to his wealth. His frequent struggles with the direst poverty, (I cannot refrain from mentioning here and anecdote connected with this subject, as if was related to me by one of Hahnemann’s family, which will convey a vivid idea of the poverty they endured. During his residence at Machern, after toiling all day long at his task of translating works for the press, he frequently assisted his brave-hearted wife to wash the family clothes at night, and as they were unable to purchase soap they employed raw potatoes for this purpose. The quantity of bread he was enabled to earn by his literary labours for his numerous family was so small that, in order to prevent grumbling, he used to weight out to each an equal proportion. At this period one of his daughters, a little girl, fell ill, and being unable to eat the portion of daily bread that fell to her share, she carefully put it away in a box, hoarding it up child-like till her appetite should return. Her sickness, however increasing, she felt assured that she should never recover to enjoy her store, so she one day told her favourite little sister that she knew she was going to die, that she should never be able to eat any more, and solemnly made over to her as a gift the accumulated fragments of hard, dried-up bread, from which she had anticipated such a feast had she recovered), had no doubt taught him, by many cruel lessons, the value of money, and we can scarcely wonder that he was rather economical and saving, more especially as he had a large family, nine of whom were, daughters, from whom he might any day be cut off, and whom he would not like to leave portion-less. That this was his real motive is evident from the circumstance that when he left Coethen for Paris he divided his fortune, amounting to 60,000 thalers, or about L10,000 sterling among his family. If he took large fees he did so both because he had a very high idea of the dignity of his profession, and because he well knew the value of the services he rendered to his patients, and the amount of labour he had undergone in order to be enabled to render such services. To the poor he was liberal, in giving them the benefit of his advice gratuitously. As for the other charge brought against him for making the patients pay for the consultation on receipt of the letter, I think that was an arrangement which concerned Hahnemann’ patients alone, and if they did not object to it, surely his colleagues had no occasion to find fault. Hahnemann rather deserved the thanks than the censure of his colleagues for devising and introducing a method whereby the just interests of the profession were protected.
As to his religious principles, Hahnemann was brought up in the Lutheran persuasion, but he could not be said to have adopted the tenets of that or any other sect of Christians. His principles, as we gather them from his works, were nearly these : — He believed in the ruling providence of an all-good and all- bountiful God, and he held that every man was bound to his utmost to benefit his fellow-men according to the particular faculties with which each was endowed. He traced every good thing to the hand of the almighty and beneficent God, to whom he always gave all the glory for all the good he was enabled to confer on his brethren of mankind, and denied to himself any merit for what he had done.
Robert Ellis Dudgeon practiced at the London Homeopathic Hospital and specialised in Optics.
Robert Ellis Dudgeon wrote Pathogenetic Cyclopaedia 1839, Cure of Pannus by Innoculation, London and Edinburgh Journal of Medical Science 1844, Hahnemann’s Organon, 1849, Lectures on the Theory & Practice of Homeopathy, 1853, Homeopathic Treatment and Prevention of Asiatic Cholera 1847, Hahnemann’s Therapeutic Hints 1847, On Subaqueous Vision, Philosophical Magazine, 1871, The Influence of Homeopathy on General Medical Practice Since the Death of Hahnemann 1874, Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica, 2 vols 1878-81, The Human Eye Its Optical Construction, 1878, Hahnemann’s Materia Medica Pura, 1880, The Sphygmograph, 1882, Materia Medica: Physiological and Applied 1884, Hahnemann the Founder of Scientific Therapeutics 1882, Hahnemann’s Organon 1893 5th Edition, Prolongation of Life 1900, Hahnemann’s Lesser Writing.