No one has ever resented this procedure, and I have never repented of it; it has put me in a position to leave sufficient to my eight heirs, so that each of them can live on his interest, such is the blessedness and justice of this procedure. Follow your faithful adviser who, far from being jealous, is glad when his pupils are doing well.
By lending you do not good, you can only make enemies of your clients when payment has to succeed to the benefit already derived by them and which is already forgotten.
Hahnemann congratulated Dr. Aegidi, in a letter of July 31st, 1834, on being given the title “Councillor of Medicine” which was conferred upon him by the Duke of Bernburg, “as a short-sighted world, notices such things more than it does true merit.” The letter continues:
I gather from your letter and also from Jahr that the (wealthy) public neglects even the payment of a capable homoeopathic physician. Why do you consider them so much? Why not imitate me and demand your fees from rich and poor? I, with my large family, would still be a poor man, if without taking any notice of the ancient custom of the allopathic physicians, (who only let their accounts run on in order to retain their patients) to demand payment only at the end of the treatment, or at the New Year, when their good services have long been forgotten-in other words, if I had not done the opposite to what they do. I considered that those who required my services must pay me, and that is every time immediately after my advice has been given, because nothing is more quickly forgotten by the people of this world than kind deeds.-He must pay at once several thalers for a prescription lasting a month, if he has the means to do so, the man of moderate means less, and the poor man only a few groschen if he receives a prescription for a fortnight, and only the very poor must be treated gratuitously. He who does not like this, he who does not wish to pay me at the time, for my trouble, he gives me to understand that he wants to cheat me, therefore let him stay away. No workman goes home in the evening from his work without putting out his hand to receive his wages; should we then be less wise than they are, and content ourselves for our trouble with the hope of some future payment, which means allowing eighty to a hundred to cheat us?
We are not allopaths who have high medical fees and can according to law demand high sums for evil deeds. We must take on the spot what we have earned, as we are not considered worthy of ordinary justice; if we submit to this we wrong ourselves and our families, and the deceitful fellow who owes us the greatest recognition is probably laughing at us.
You think that the patients won’t come. You are wrong, and if they did not come because they did not wish to pay at the time, then you have spared yourself the trouble of treating such obvious cheats. The homoeopath must, in the beginning, be content with little in order to introduce and carry out this natural procedure but then he has conquered. His income will increase and in the end he will be more in demand than the slack patron of that physician who pushes his payments off hoping that they may be graciously granted sometime.
Seven years ago, Gross was just as weak and remained poor, I made him come here to me and explained it to him; he understood and carried it out, and now he is a wealthy man, and has more patients than he had before.
Cothen, January 8th, 1833.
It is your own fault that you have not demanded payment from your patients at each consultation as I happily do. After this, do as I do, and you will become a rich man without any trouble. I would have remained a poor man, and, because poor, without courage, had I left it to the patient’s own inclination to pay for my treatment when and what amount they liked. The whole world will cheat us if we let it. And not one (as it is written about the lepers) would come back (after he was healed) and give God the praise. No! I know better, and in the midst of all the allopathic instigations I am doing well, and steadily improving. No one enters my house without the money to pay me at the time, or else monthly in advance.
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