Hahnemann as a Physician



And again in the year 1826, Professor Kraus in his “Lexicon of Medicine,” (page 404) says:

Hahnemann is recognised as a good pharmacist and as such he has acquired immortal laurels through his presentation of the so- called mercurius solubilis, and partly through his treatise on “Poisoning by Arsenic,” although these doctrines were subsequently considerably improved.

SUPPLEMENT 193

HAHNEMANN ON THE PRESERVATION OF HEALTH IN THE LAST EDITION OF THE “ORGANON” In the year before his death he showed that his point of view was still exactly the same as four decades previously in 77 and 204. In 77 he mentions among other things, the disease of people who reside in unhealthy localities and particularly in marshy districts:

Who inhabit cellars, damp workshops or other confined dwellings, who are deprived of exercise or of open air, who ruin their health by over-exertion of body or mind, who live in a constant state of worry, etc. These states of ill health, which persons bring upon themselves, disappear spontaneously under an improved mode of living.

And again in 204, he points out ” all chronic affections, ailments and diseases that depend on a persistent unhealthy mode of living.”

He also tries to meet the intermittent fever, which he saw in Transylvania in the first instance, through regulating the mode of living. He says in 244:

The intermittent fevers endemic in marshy districts and tracts of country frequently exposed to inundation, give a great deal of work to physicians of the old school, and yet a healthy man may in his youth become habituated even to marshy districts and remain in good health, provided he preserves a faultless regimen and his system is not lowered by want, fatigue, or pernicious passions. It sometimes happens that when these patients exchange, without delay, the marshy district for one that is dry and mountainous, recovery apparently ensues (the fever leaves them) if they be not yet deeply sunk in disease.

The amount of importance which he laid upon diet up to his death, can be seen from the 6th Edition of the “Organon”

208.

With the patient, his mode of living and diet…. must be taken into consideration.

244. In intermittent fevers, he demands apart from correct physical exercise, healthy intellectual occupation and regulated habits.

259. With the necessary and suitable smallness of the doses in homoeopathic treatment, it is easy to understand that during treatment everything must be eliminated from the diet, and the mode of living, which could have any medicinal action.

260. He then enumerates in a long footnote all the beverages and foods which the chronic invalid must avoid:

Coffee: fine Chinese, and other herb teas; beer prepared with medicinal vegetable substances unsuitable for the patient’s state; so-called fine liquors made with medicinal spices; all kinds of punch; spiced chocolate: highly spiced dishes and sauces; spiced cakes and ices which have been prepared with medicinal substances, as for instance, coffee, vanilla, etc.; crude medicinal vegetables for soups; dishes of herbs, roots and stalks of plants possessing medicinal qualities: as asparagus with long green tips), hops and all vegetables possessing medicinal properties, celery, parsley, sorrel, tarragon, all kinds of onions, etc.; old cheese, and meat dishes which easily decompose (as the meat and fat of pork, ducks and geese, or too young veal, and sour dishes); all kind of salads which have a medicinal secondary effect ought certainly to be kept from this kind of patient, as excess even of sugar, and salt, as also spirituous drinks which have not been sufficiently diluted with water.

SUPPLEMENT 194

ON THE ABUSE OF ALCOHOL AS A CAUSE OF BAD HUMOURS AND OLD SORES.

In “Directions for curing old sores and ulcers” (1784), Hahnemann writes:

The excessive use of brandy and liqueurs so terribly injuries the human machine that even young people are soon transformed into half living corpses. This can be seen daily. All the finer fluids of the body are violently driven out by them through the increased circulation of the blood, and the nerve centres are destroyed. The fluids of the body that are capable of condensation to a gelatinous consistency become thick and tough, the muscular fibres become shortened and their irritability destroyed. The organs of digestion, particularly, become shrunken, the stomach and intestines become like leather, insensitive, thickened and shrunken, and the villi and lacteal ducts become contracted almost to the point of obstruction. The whole process of digestion is slowed down. No wonder then that extreme debility, loss of strength, obstructions, tumours and bad humours are produced, and then on the least provocation bad sores arise.

In connection with this Hahnemann describes the harmful effects of alcohol in an individual case. A potter who had become poor through alcoholic abuse and whose health was impaired, recovered again when in the workhouse he only received water and sparingly of dry bread.

In the introduction to the “Organon”, (page 40), he speaks against the “stimulating and strengthening treatment” of the old school:

Has it ever succeeded in removing the physical weakness so often engendered and kept up or increased by a chronic disease with its prescriptions of etheric Rhine-wine or fiery Tokay? The strength gradually sank…. and all the lower, the greater the quantity of wine the patient was persuaded to drink, because the stimulation of the vital force was followed by a relaxation in its after effects.

SUPPLEMENT 195

HAHNEMANN ON HYDROPHOBIA

Hahnemann frequently expresses in detail in translation and particularly in essays, as in the “Friend of Health,” the hydrophobia of dogs, which was a frequent occurrence in his time. He treats of this subject three times, first in the year 1777, in his first translation from the English “Nugent’s Experiments on Hydrophobia” (150pages). Hahnemann was only twenty-two years old and had barely been a medical student for a year and a half. There can, therefore, hardly have been a question of personal observations and opinions in this first translation.

It is different in the case of his essay on the “Bites of dogs suffering from hydrophobia.” He prefaced his “Friend of Health” in 1792 with this essay and showed by it the great importance attached to this question.

In the year 1803 he returned to it once more and published in the “Reichsanzeiger,” No.71, :thoughts occasioned by the recommendation of the remedies against the consequences arising from bites by dogs affected with Hydrophobia,” published in the “Reichsanzeiger” of 1803, No.7 and No.49.

Hahnemann describes in his “Friend of Health” at first very emphatically the results of bites in human beings. Then he refuses to go into the question of the numerous remedies advocated against it, and confesses at the same time ” that no reliable cure is known.” He wishes only to clear away a few prejudices. Above all, faith in the undoubted effect of the internal remedies is recommended. It is due to the lack of this faith that the best external preventative measures are frequently neglected, for instance, we omit to remove the poisonous saliva from the wound immediately; if this were done, hydrophobia might not result from such a bite. The superstition exists that a dog suffering from hydrophobia would die “within a few days after having bitten,”but if a dog who had bitten did not die, then it was not suffering from hydrophobia. To this also it is due that the application of suitable remedies was neglected. (Hahnemann quotes several examples of this from the medical literature.) a third superstition was that the position of hydrophobia from the dog was only infectious when it entered the wound from a bite. (Counter examples are however quoted according to which hydrophobia had been contracted from a licking of the skin without any abrasion.) Hahnemann’s opinion that hydrophobia cab be contracted through the saliva from mere licking is still held to-day and rightly so; only we know that without an abrasion, even if invisible to the naked eye, the disease poison cannot enter the body. Hahnemann then leads up to the following instructions:

It is safer to consider the bite of a dog that has not been annoyed, as regards the treatment as the bite of a dog who is suffering from hydrophobia. This is the safest way to prevent hydrophobia. Secondly, do not trust any dog who, without being annoyed, bites other dogs and human beings, and presents a dejected and wild appearance. Such an animal should at once be destroyed as useless. This would be better than to give one single dog suffering from hydrophobia its freedom. To lock up dogs for a few days, who have been bitten, is dangerous; they must either be destroyed or kept safely locked up or a period of not less than four weeks, as cases are record showing that dogs which have been bitten only developed hydrophobia several weeks later.

Hahnemann recommends as a remedy for the consequences of a bite:

Have the wound immediately well washed with water, in which a large quantity of wood ashes has been mixed. Repeat this frequently until the surgeon arrives.

Richard Haehl
Richard M Haehl 1873 - 1932 MD, a German orthodox physician from Stuttgart and Kirchheim who converted to homeopathy, travelled to America to study homeopathy at the Hahnemann College of Philadelphia, to become the biographer of Samuel Hahnemann, and the Secretary of the German Homeopathic Society, the Hahnemannia.

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