This preliminary report will be very useful to me. If possible, I would like to be notified by a preceding letter ( If only a few days beforehand ) about which day I am to expect him, or at least on which day he starts. In any case I must know if he will arrive in the morning or afternoon, so that I may receive him myself, and arrange my visits to my local patients accordingly. May God restore him to health!
My family and I send their kind regards to you and your whole house. With warm friendship,
Your Dr.HAHNEMANN.
Together with Wezel may I ask for a remuneration in advance for two months.
On July 10th, 1800, Hahnemann asked from Hamburg as a monthly fee for Wezel, s keep, 10 Friedrichsd’or. After 9 Friedrichsd’or been settled upon with him previously from Gotha. He based his increased on the fact that Hamburg was 15 per cent. dearer to live in than Altona. But scarcely two weeks later Hahnemann asked his friend Becker to help him to get Wezel removed as soon as possible.
Hamburg.
July 24th, 1800.
Dearest friend,
It is quite impossible for me to keep Wezel. I took him in because he was here, but more so because Blodau had written to me that he was like a lamb, and did no harm to anybody. I believed it, and left him for eleven days to his own devices just as he wished, without medicine, in order to watch him. He remained quiet. But when I began to do something for his health, to persuade him to go for a walk, etc., then it proved that all these assurances were without foundation. He wanted to throw me out of the room, and beat me; and when I called others to help in persuading or forcing him to go for a walk-or at least go onto the yard- he bit and scratched so that we were unable to move him. I myself was in danger through this. When I tried to get my way and got four strong men to help me, everyone, withdrew. Nobody would lend himself to this, and I could get nobody to do it even for a considerable sum of money. ” All such people here are put in asylums and in the box for maniacs, ” no one had any pity for such people, neither they nor anyone like them should have anything to do with persons of this kind.” This was the reply I got in at least ten instances. Even supposing I could get some strong workmen for this job who would keep their word, I know from experience that it would be impossible to pay for them. Those who would be of any use could earn for more in day in quiet work than I could afford them. They all earn two or three thaler a day in good money. It is very doubtful if they would let me engage them for my purpose even at such heavy cost, as prejudice, want of human kindness and unreliability are customary here. I resign my treatment of the patient with pleasure, and wrote to Rat Blodau five days ago with the pressing request to have him fetched away. I cannot keep him, as here he would have to be cured and not just fed. In my present position this would be impossible.
He has never met with the slightest resistance- in any case he has always conquered. He has become obstinate and refractory. Only when the mood drives him to something can be persuaded, otherwise he resists with the strength of a lion.
In a place where human kindness is easier to get, I do not consider it impossible that he might be restored; and if I am asked, I will give all necessary instructions gained by my experience of him. The first condition is : that he should imagine his landlord to be nothing less than a doctor. ( It is really more advantageous if his landlord is not a doctor. Wezel can easily penetrate through dissimulation. It is only necessary to have a kind, sensible and trustworthy man.)
If anyone should give as a reason for a certain request that it would be good for his health and that a physician recommended it, he would certainly not do it; and what is worse than that, to force him would do more harm than good to his health.
What else is to be done, and what medicines are to be given, I will advise with pleasure. My most urgent request is that he should be removed as soon as possible. Be so good as do your share to secure this. I will then do all can to help this unfortunate man back to health by medicine and advice, both founded upon my experience of him. He is quite a different man from the description given of him : much that has been said and written of him is quite contrary to the truth.
I ask for a fulfilment of my petition, and am as ever,
Your true friend,
HAHNEMANN.
Hamburg. July 24th, 1800.
Molln, in Lauenburg, September 20th, 1800.
Dear friend,
The unfortunate Wezel had been with been with me 1 3/4 months, when he was fetched away on September 1st, in a carriage which came from Sondershausen. Fortunately it arrived just in time before the closing of the city gates. Thus I was able to leave Hamburg on a forced march. That place would ruin any honest man who is not in commerce, without having to wait there for an expensive and weary confinement of my wife, which in consequence would have kept me there another bad winter. Thank goodness! I am here where I need earn only half the amount in order to live with more comfort than in Hamburg. It is a small place with 230 houses, mostly filled with modest working people, and possessing all necessary requirements amid beautiful surroundings.
Here I will again stand at the helm of the little ship of my making, and only cure what Heaven sends me. The huge, merciless waves of Hamburg, which carry large vessels but overturn small craft, had almost swallowed me up. Thank God, Who again put me ashore!
If I did not help the unhappy man, who is very different from what has been said about him, directly, I may yet be able him indirectly, leaving it to you and circumstances to decide. I know sufficiently now to be able to give good advice more easily than others could do, and I will do so free of charge.
Oh! if only we had escaped the war, which is the grave of science! SUPPLEMENT 27 TREATMENT OF A PATIENT BY LETTER
From 1793 to 1805. Dr. Bernard Schuchardt, Geh. Regierungs and Obermedizinalrat in Gotha, published in 1886 ” Letters of Hahnemann to a patient during the years 1793-1805″ (Tubingen, published by Lauppe), which are addressed to an ” educated artisan of Gotha.” The patient, who seemed to have had a delicate constitution, had in spite of it, or perhaps because he followed Hahnemann’s instructions, reached the great age of 92 years, and only died in 1851. These letters show, as Dr. Schuchardt rightly concludes from the text, ” little indication of his (Hahnemann’s) system, as it was built up step by from 1790 until it was completed in the year 1810. We see instead in almost every line the great attention he paid to the mode of living (even, we may add, to minutest ); especially to diet and its influence on the organism and its infirmities. On the other hand we notice how he managed to keep patients for many years under his care, with his very simple means and prescriptions, and how he impressed upon them repeatedly the simple rules of life which he recognised as necessary.” Dr. Schuchardt of Gotha, who is no friend to friend to homoeopathy, ultimately points out the importance of homoeopathy on the development of the new medicine which it ” has undeniably influenced, at least in a negative and indirect way.”
SUPPLEMENT 28
“ON THE MILK SCAB”-CRUSTA LACTEA (MILKCRUST).
Hahnemann published in 1795, in J. FR. Blumenbach’s “Medizinischer Bibliothek” (Vol.III, part 4), Gottingen, an essay in which he says :
In the village where my children enjoyed perfect health, there were many children affected with the so-called milkcrust, and that to an unusual degree.
In order to prevent an infection of his children, as Hahnemann thought the disease was infectious, he isolated his own children. One sick boy had however brought infection through a kiss and all four children became affected.
I poured warm water over dry Hepar sulphuris-powdered oyster shell mixed with an equal part of Sulphur and kept for ten minutes at a white heat-and thus made a weak solution. I painted the faces of the two who had the worst eruption with this every hour for consecutive days. After the first application I noticed that the evil was arrested and gradually began to heal.
The same treatment was applied to the children with like success.
Hahnemann adds here :
Is the milkscab a skin disease acquired only through contagion? Is not the eruption-contagion perhaps due to small animalculae or miasms as an underlying cause? I do not think that my practice will ever give me another opportunity which might answer my question in the affirmative in a more positive way than this one, which I had altogether under my control.
The “village” must have been Molschleben; this can be deduced from the fact that the component parts of that volume were compiled in 1793. In the summer of that year, Hahnemann was in Molschleben, from which place he went to Pyrmont and Brunswick and he therefore removed to two cities.
SUPPLEMENT 29
HAHNEMANN’S ACCIDENT WHILE TRAVELLING.
Gottingen,
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