Hahnemann’s Occupations



I assure you otherwise of my favour as Sovereign, Cothen, the 22nd of October 1831.

3. HAHNEMANN’S REPLY TO THE DUKE

Your Ducal Highness esteemed order of the Cabinet, of the 22nd Inst. has sadly grieved me, as it presupposed that I am guilty of some kind of offence against the existing medical laws. It would be easy for me to prove that I am in the right if Your Ducal Highness would have deigned to name to me the Article of the Medical Laws that I have infringed.

The local medical laws are known to me, and I shall always be the first to observe them.,

In the main points however, the denunciation against me, which has come before Your Highness, is inaccurate and not justified, therefore I take the liberty to represent the facts as they actually are.

In my regulations printed in Cothen, it stated, that the preventative medicine is not to be procured through me, but through various homoeopathic chemists whom I name. But a large number of local residents came to me and begged me to save them this round-about way, especially as they trusted no one else to prepare it as well as I would. There were a hundred such private applications, and I should not have had time to deal with them all. I therefore refused them with the injunction, that I would only give it to the District Supervisors if they asked me for it, and they could then share it out to the various families, so that no one would be deprived of it. The District Supervisors utilized this offer of mine, and they came and asked me for the protective remedy, so that if cholera should appear they could distribute it among the families under their supervision and use it themselves.

I have not summoned any of these citizen Supervisors, and I have not asked one of them to come to me, least of all the Master-Butcher Kaiser.

He, who like myself, holds no public office, has no power to summon anyone. They have all come to me by their own choice to procure the protective medicine.

Every individual is free by law, to ask the assistance of a qualified physician no one except in hospital is obliged to be under a definitely appointed physician, and no one cab be prevented from asking for the assistance of that qualified medical man in whom he has most faith.

As naturally every body is free to leave unused the medicine against cholera which I have been asked for, I cannot see how the Master-Butcher Kaiser, could lodge an accusation against me, or how they could appeal to Your Ducal Highness against me, as Your Highness will know that I was called here on the 2nd of April, 1821, through the late Austrian Consul; General Adam von Muller, with the approval of the Directorship of the State Commission, and Your late Brother’s consent, and that I was given permission to establish myself in the capital, Cothen, as medical practitioner, with the right to prepare with my own hands the remedies required for my treatment, and to give them to my patients myself.

I submit therefore, to your Ducal Highness, the most humble petition, that You will graciously grant that for the short time that is left of my life, I may be allowed to do as much good to my helpless human brethren as by rights will permit, and therefore that You will continue to grant me the privilege of providing gratuitously for the citizens and inhabitants who ask me, the protective and curative specific against cholera, which I have discovered and which has proved to be the only efficacious treatment, and so give me the pleasure of saving my fellow-citizens from the apparent danger of death.

Your Ducal Highness’s most submissive,

SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.

Cothen, the 26th October, 1831.

4. THE ANSWER OF THE DUKE CONCERNING THE RIGHT OF DISPENSING MEDICINES.

In answer to you letter of the 26th ult., I herewith reply, that the permission you received to prepare with your own hands the remedies required for your treatment, and to dispense them yourself, has not been withdrawn, and I am at present not inclined to restrict that permission as long as you do not extend it beyond its limits, in which case it will have to rest entirely upon the existing regulations.

HEINRICH.

Cothen, the Ist of November, 1831.

5.A FURTHER ACCUSATION AGAINST HAHNEMANN.

Your Ducal Highness, Will graciously notice from the enclosed printed matter that Hofrath Dr. Hahnemann has dared to have his abusive writings printed elsewhere-as far as I can remember, without any emissions of the parts that had been cancelled.

The bookseller Aue, has had this printed matter sent for sale, and has presented it to me in accordance with a previous order, and I have, for a present, prohibited the sale of one single copy, even to the patients and clients of the aforesaid Hahnemann. I submissively await further instructions on the matter from Your Ducal Highness, as well as the supreme command, “if perhaps having been warned, this Hahnemann should be especially dealt with.” Fortunately since the attempt to have his writings printed in Cothen, matters have much improved, and the circulation of this pamphlet is much less dangerous, as the fear of cholera has been removed, so that now it can be regarded as a literary controversy. I remain, in deepest submission, AUG. V. BEHR.

Cothen, the 12th Dec., 1831.

6. THE DUKE’S ORDERS.

(a) To our State Government.

The Hofrath Dr. Hahnemann, residing here, intended a short while ago, to publish here an essay on cholera, which contained open attacks against all Governments, and very insulting and defamatory remarks on the allopathic physicians who are very respectable subjects, and useful to their fellow-brethren, and under the protection of the Government. These attacks were made at a time when the fear of cholera favoured an opportunity for agitations, therefore this essay was only -asset by the censor after the passage had been erased. Hofrath Hahnemann, however, preferred to have that writing published in Leipsic, and not here, with its original wording, and the editor sent it with a supplement by Dr. Anton Schmit, to the local bookseller, Aue, for sale. For the reasons mentioned above, and because I do not wish that in my country, a book should be sold openly which might give rise to agitations, disputes, and discord, the sale of the book in question: “:Appeal to thinking philanthropists respecting he mode of propagation of Asiatic cholera, “Leipsic, edited by Carl Berger, cannot be allowed, and Our Government is to notify the bookseller Aue, that he will not be allowed to sell this pamphlet and its supplement, or to announce its publication in the paper.

HEINRICH.

Cothen, 13th December, 1831.

(b) To my Privy Councillor of the Exchequer von Behr,

I return herewith the essay and supplement of Hofrath Hahnemann, which was sent with yesterday’s report, and while I sanction herewith the provisional prohibition of its sale, I remark that I have simultaneously ordered my Government to forbade the bookseller,Aue to sell this work.

HEINRICH.

Cothen, 13th December, 1831.

The documents of Supplement 114m, Nos. I, 5, 6a and 6b, are copied from the originals in the Ducal private ARchives of Zerbst; No.3, is the render lying of Hahnemann’s draft which as found among his literary remains.

SUPPLEMENT 115

REPRESENTATION REGARDING THE USE OF CAMPHOR IN CHOLERA

W. Gross wrote to his “dearest friend”:

Juterbogk, 17.7.31.

With regard to your suggestion of using Camphor against cholera, the public objects that you desire to have this specific administered in much strong doses, stronger even that the allopathies use, and they think, that if the remedy corresponds to the patient homoeopathically, in must kill him. God grant that the epidemic may spare us; already the preparations which the state orders, make us unhappy, and the physician especially a real cross bearer, and a slave who is the sacrificed himself.

The answer to this appeared in the “Allg. Anz. der Deutschen,” together with the following note:

Dearest Friend,

I take the liberty to send you herewith an explanatory addition to my treatment of cholera, by means of Camphor, for publication; ignorant allopathic enemies, and homoeopathic weaklings require this reprimand,. Be of good cheer on account of all the good that you have done for humanity, and keep in kind remembrance,

Cothen, the 11th July, 1831.

SUPPLEMENT 116

CONCERNING CHOLERA

Hahnemann’s great-nephew, L. Hermann, wrote: St. Petersburg, July 25th, 1831.

I am writing to you in the midst of affliction owing to cholera partly to thank you for the news you sent me through Trinius, and partly to give you, according to circumstances, and accurate description of the disease, and to report about what I have been able to do. At the first appearance of the disease,Adam became separated from us as through a quarantine which was drawn round Petercourt; Trinius had to wait for the orders of the Duke and Princess of Wurtemberg and so I was practically left alone to practice homoeopathy unhampered, as the two physicians, Dr. Weather who is at the Oxuchows Hospital, and Hofrath Kleinenberg who is at the Bark, only practice homoeopathy conditionally, and were unable to join in a combined undertaking.

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