Samuel Hahnemann; his life and work, based on recently discovered state papers, documents, letters, etc. Translated from the German by Marie L. Wheeler and W.H.R. Grundy. Edited by J.H. Clarke & F.J. Wheeler. This translation of the German biography, includes a 27-chapter life history in volume 1, based on letters and other sources fully documented in volume 2. Extensive material on Hahnemann’s life, relations with the medical profession and development of potentized remedies.
The house where Hahnemann was born, is the one that stands in our suburb over the Fleischsteg, at the corner of the Neumarkt, sub. No. 459, registered in the new Brand-register, and now belonging to the smith, Johann Gottlieb Lohse. …
Hahnemann’s father, before going to the factory, used frequently to lock his son in a room, close the shutters, and give him a difficult sentence to ponder over, of which he had to give an account on his father’s return. This contributed to making the son into an original thinker….
Hahnmann had an excellent command over ten different languages like German, Italian, Greek and English….
1782. On the 17th November, Samuel Hahnemann, doctor of Medicine, Medical Officer of Health to the Saxon Electorate in Gommern, aged 28 years, eldest son of Christian Gottfried Hahnemann, a painter in the porcelain factory of Meissen, and Johanne Christanen, married spinster Johanna Leopoldine Henriette Kuchlerin, aged 19 years, only legitimate daughter of Gotthard Heinrich Kuchlers, who was apothecary here, and Martha Sophien….
Hahnemann devoted the first week to observation only, without giving any medical treatment to his patient. While the old school physicians could not cure Klockenbring, Hahnemann succeeded in giving him back his health. Hahnemann had given up all his time and energies to this one patient….
If you are trying to put your health on a sounder footing, any non-medical rules which I can advise you to follow consist in : not undertaking more work than your bodily strength can manage, nor trying to accomplish it too quickly. Anger and sorrow must be expelled from the bosom of a wise man too….
No science, no art, even no craft, has progressed so little with the march of time, no science has remained so far behind in its original imperfection as the science of medicine. Our medical science requires a complete reformation from head to foot….
They are making all preparations, to transmute Torgau into a big and terrible fortress, in which my family is not likely to live in peace. I have to sell my dear and comfortable freehold house and move to Leipsic….
My method of treatment has nothing in common with the ordinary medical science, on the contrary it is exactly its opposite. It is a Novum quid, to which the existing measurement of medical prescribing can in no way apply….
Cothen is a pretty little town; it lies in a valley through which flows a little river, that gives freshness and beauty to the surrounding country. Wide and beautifully laid out streets together with the castle of the reigning Duke, adorn the town. …
I have spent twelve years in discovering the sources of those incredibly numerous quantities of protracted illness, in exploring this great truth, which was unknown in the past, as well as to our contemporaries, in proving it and at the same time discovering the chief (anti-psoric) remedies which would cope with his thousand-headed monster of disease in all its different manifestations and forms….
Although Hahnemann demanded strict obedience from his children, as a husband he was far from having the rule in his own hands. His tall and stout wife, who like Agnes Frei, in the case of the noble painter, Albrecht Durer, gave him many a bitter hour, exercised the most baneful influence upon him. …
This is the most favourable opportunity to demonstrate the higher value of the new teaching in the right light, because the cholera is prevailing here, and the efforts made with the old treatment are not very successful, while those of a homoeopathic candidate, who stayed here once for a time proved helpful….
We will accord permission to Dr., Lehmann to establish himself here as homoeopathic practitioner and as a help to Hofrath Hahnemann, and as such to prepare and privately dispense the remedies required for the treatment of his patients. …
Our regenerated true homoeopathic hospital, which is already attended by several foreign physicians, will actually lay before the eyes of the world, the proof that the conscientious practise of our method does not require any assistance from the old science of maltreatment, in order to cure all that is curable, without weakening or torturing the sufferer as allopathy is unable to avoid doing….
Hahnemann was happy for the first time; I nursed him as one nurses a newborn child, I was his barber, his valet, his secretary. I loved and admired him so much that I would have served him on my bended knees. Never was tenderness more fully returned, never was a union stronger. …
His waiting-room is always occupied, and the last arrival has frequently to wait for hours for his turn. Hahnemann never curtails that thorough examination of patients so earnestly recommended by himself, so that every individual takes up longer time that is the case in the consulting-room of other physicians….
Homoeopathy alone knows and teaches that the cure is to be effected only by means of the entire force still existing in the patient, when a medicine perfectly homoeopathic to the present case of disease, and administered in the proper dose, causes this force to exert its curative activity….
Hahnemann’s Personality – He was too ambitious to lose himself in dreams; he was too self-willed and stubborn to tread the beaten track. If he followed a tradition it must be one that was eternal; when he expounded a teaching he could tolerate denial, but not discussion….
The strict and conscientious homoeopath cannot attend as many patients daily as the allopath can. The much more detailed examinations of the patient, the taking of notes, and the process of individualising requires a much longer time than the method of the allopathic school, which only follows general indications. …
We shrug our shoulders at the uses of venesection and emetics in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when they were used for every disease….
Dr. Willmar Schwabe, who founded the Homoeopathic Central Pharmacy of Leipsic, which is known throughout the world, has advocated most strongly the accurate adherence to Hahnemann’s instructions for the preparation of medicines, has repeated Hahnemann’s tests at great expenditure of time and money, by following his instructions….
I have the right to put the title of `doctor of homoeopathy’ on my cards; as I really hold that diploma given to me by the Society of Homoeopathic physicians in Pennsylvania, where after Hahnemann, the physicians most skilled in this science are to be found….
At last the lid is completely removed and Hahnemann’s body wrapped in silken bandages becomes visible. The structure of the body as shown under the bandages used in the embalming appears well preserved. The corpse is slightly shrunken, but what astonishes particularly those present is the smallness of Hahnemann’s stature….
Regierungsrath Baron von Boenninghausen of Munster has studied and grasped my homoeopathic system of treatment so thoroughly that as a homoeopath he deserves to be fully trusted, and if I should be ill myself and unable to help myself I would not entrust myself to any other physician….