Your affectionate friend, F.A.
(King of Saxony).
Castle Pillniez, July 14th, 1820.
To His Serene Highness, the Imp. R. General Field-Marshal, and Councillor of War, President Prince of Schwarzenberg at Leipsic.
Your Serene Highness’s highly esteemed letter of the 8th inst. has been handed to me by the Colonel Baron von Wernhardt. Immediately after receiving it I hastened to inform the King, my gracious Master, of the reason why this officer had been sent here, and His Majesty has graciously summoned him to Pillnitz, that he may deliver his report on Dr. Hahnemann’s method of treatment.
Will your Serene Highness permit that, in consequence of the provisional reply already given on his report concerning this matter, and the Royal letter which is here enclosed, I may be allowed to refer to and add the following.
The inquiries made by His Majesty’s order showed that it was not a question of forbidding Dr. Hahnemann to practise in accordance with his own new method of treatment, but that owing to the apothecaries of Leipsic having laid a complaint before the Municipal Council of that town, the latter were on the point of forbidding Dr. Hahnemann from dispensing his own medicines, in accordance with the existing laws. But an appeal made by some of his patients, to the Government was considered, and this report will now be tendered to His Majesty.
I will close by thanking Your Serene Highness most heartily for the flattering and greatly valued expressions of your good will, with the assurance that I await impatiently for the moment when I shall be granted the privilege of congratulating you on your restoration to health, and to express the profound veneration and devotion with which I have the honour of being.
Your Serene Highness’s most obedient servant, E.
Dresden, 14th July, 1820.
SUPPLEMENT 64
ADDITION TO THE POST MORTEM FINDINGS OF THE DECEASED PRINCE OF SCHWARZENBERG.
Hofrat Clarus added to the postmortem report in “Hufeland’s Journal,” Vol. 51, Part 4, the following paragraph.
As regards Dr. Hahnemann’s assistance in the treatment of the deceased Prince, I declare with all my heart, that I do not envy him in the least the fame which he has acquired through it, and can leave the test of his convictions with confidence to time and the efforts of others, as my complex profession, and the road which, I have set myself through my literary work, leave me neither leisure nor the desire to take part in the discussions on this subject. In the meantime, my public position makes me declare myself openly on this occasion, a decided opponent as regards his views in general, and I believe I acted in the spirit of our wise and mild Government, when I advised my younger colleagues, to abstain from every passionate controversy, and on every occasion to try and make valid the principle, that where openings transgress against the conviction held by a majority, it is safer and dignified to leave them to the free test of every- body, than to fight them by degrees and magisterial interposition, a procedure, which with regard to truth is vain and useless, because it will always fight as way to victory, but puts an unearned crown of martyrdom on errors and fancies, the sight of which urges on the masses, who always shout without knowing why, to an ever increasing blind partially. Therefore, although I myself, together with the preponderant majority of physicians, am convinced, and could prove this by demonstrations, that Hahnemann’s method of treatment in individual, especially in acute cases, causes much harm, by the neglect of strong measures; yet I believe that this harm from a higher point of view, has no comparison with that which must be caused by an even only attempted impediment of the free development of the mind, and research in a German University as long as and so far as such an endeavour to find the truth in a different way from that ordinarily used, does not stand in opposition to the existing laws and arrangements. If there is among them (those that study) a small number who from lack of introductory knowledge think they can find their salvation in some one-sided theory, or use it for the sake of an unlawful and in every way low gain; then I answer that at no time have we been short of such unripe half doctors, and remark at the same time that with such shallowness, Hahnemann’s method causes far less harm in their hands than any other.
SUPPLEMENT 65
ON SELF DISPENSING.
An open letter to the High Ministry of Ecclesiastical, Educational and Medical institutions of Berlin.
Richard Haehl was also an editor and publisher of the homeopathic journal Allgemcine, and other homeopathic publications.
Haehl was responsible for saving many of the valuable artifacts of Samuel Hahnemann and retrieving the 6th edition of the Organon and publishing it in 1921.
Richard Haehl was the author of - Life and Work of Samuel Hahnemann