Dr. Hulls description of his visit to Hahnemann is classic:
“At this period Hahnemann occupied a spacious mansion in the vicinity of the Jardine de Luxembourg, at Paris. Ushered by the attendant into the grand salon, at a moment when he was engaged with a patient in his adjoining study, I had an opportunity of individualizing the appointments of this noble apartment. Its walls were hung with varied and choice paintings in oil, many of them the productions of his accomplished wife; vases, busts and medals–donatives from those whose gratitude his cures have evoked–were disposed in tasteful arrangement, and his centre table was laden with the productions of German, French and other tongues–presentation copies–alike giving evidence of the abundant labours of his zealous disciples, and of the almost miraculous extension his system has acquired throughout the entire civilized world.
“Introduced into the library or study, I had, for the first time, the inexpressible gratification of beholding the face and grasping the hand of the great reformist of our century. I felt myself in the presence of a mighty intellect–once compelled to struggle with keen adversity, to contend with the persecution and cupidity of his rivals, and in banishment, to depend upon the protective shelter of a noble stranger–now independently situated in the heart of Europe, and proudly eminent in the admiration of literati, philosophers, noblemen and crowned heads”.
Dr. Hulls description of Hahnemann, his nobility of bearing, his massive Socratic head, and silvery locks, and the kindly way in which he was received are to be found in records of Hahnemanns biographers. It would certainly be a painful parallel to contrast this opportune meeting with the story of the Rev. Mr. Everest, his fidus achates during those long and arid years of profitless waiting, scanty remunerative translating; to those days at Stotteritz, in the Trial or Wander years, when we are told that he was so poor that he himself wore rude clogs of wood, helped his wife bake bread, and with her other household tasks; and finally to review that pathetic story of the division of bread among his starving children.
No; let us rather dwell upon the majesty and fullness of those master years (Mejsterjahre), when, crowned with his well-earned success, he rested upon the lofty summit of his fame, and watched the sun of his triumph melt into the golden afterglow of a life well spent and a nights well-earned repose.
Dudgeon, in the preface to Drysdales translation of Amekes “History of Homoeopathy,” states that:
“The history of homoeopathy is the indictment of the medical profession. A physician distinguished above his fellows for his services to medicine, chemistry and pharmacology, endowed with quite a phenomenal talent for ancient and modern languages, and well read in all the medical lore of past times, after mature thought and at a ripe age, announces to the profession that, as the result of years of arduous experiment, investigation and reflection, he believes he has discovered a therapeutic rule which will enable us to find the remedies for disease with greater certainty and precision than can be effected by any of the methods hitherto taught.
The reception which this announcement met with, and which was given to all Hahnemanns subsequent efforts to give certainty and scientific accuracy to therapeutics, . . . forms one of the most melancholy and deplorable episodes in the history of medicine”.
But why dwell upon this melancholy picture? Hahnemann is not dead, but lives in the hearts of his legion of followers, from the least to the greatest. Homoeopathy is not dead, but lives in the daily and hourly application of its sane, salutary and truth- exemplifying principles and practices. New institutions are arising to carry on the great and monumental works of the founders.
Bradford tells us that Hahnemann was “born in the middle of a century whose influence shaped our own; a century prodigal in great men; in the year when Frederick, destined to be called THE GREAT, was masquerading among the art galleries of Holland; wandering in boyhood on the fair hills of Meissen when all Europe was engaged in the Seven Years War and Saxony was crushed by iron heels; going forth the young scholar to academic Leipsic just when that unfortunate monarch, Louis XVI, was ascending the guillotine-shadowed throne of France; when George the Third was king and America was only a colony of England; when Rousseau was yet writing of the Rights of Man; when cynical Voltaire was mentor to Prussian Frederick. . . .
He was of the time of the Boston Tea Party and the declaration on the State House steps of Philadelphia; of the day of Washington and Lafayette. He saw Napoleon build an empire on the ashes of a revolution; saw him march across the lands of Germany; saw Austerlitz; saw the dismal retreat from Moscow, and acted there as good physician to the sick and suffering army of 1813. He left Germany for brilliant Paris when Bismarck was a student of twenty; he, the recluse, the scholar, the thinker, became in his old age the fashionable physician in the gayest city in the world.” And finally.
His biographers highest tribute:
“Scholar whom scholars honored and respected. Physician whom physicians feared. Philologist with whom philologists dreaded to dispute. Chemist who taught chemists. Philosopher whom adversity nor honor had power to change”.
Hahnemanns impress upon the world–we find it most graphically emblazoned upon a multitude of institutions, colleges, hospitals, dispensaries, asylums, sanitariums; in thousands of earnest physicians who wear upon their brows the Seal of the Master; upon millions of loyal followers who, having felt the magic of the Masters hand, and touched the hem of his garment, rejoice in a new-found freedom and a truth that has made them free. What was there about this man that could kindle a world at his touch? He possessed a wholesome sanity, a mind of crystal clearness, a soul of unstained purity.
He was eminent, as we have seen, as chemist, physician, translator, innovator, reformer. His was a philosophy of life moulded in the crucible of toil, and hardened in the fires of poverty, privation and suffering. He could speak from the heart. Hear his advice to the health-seeker:
“Check your ambition–what you cannot accomplish in one week do in two. Too great mental exertion is especially bad for the harassed mind. You must obtain a goodly portion of cold indifference. After you are buried men will still be clothed– possibly not so tastefully, but nevertheless quite tolerably. Be a philosopher, then you will attain good old age. . . . What you cannot finish, let it not worry you. . . . Obtain a modicum of indifference–then you will be my man indeed . . . especially if you adopt all my other suggestions. . . . Care-free you will awake in the morning, quickened and soothed you will go to work, without fear about the mass of duties to be performed. . . . Thus passes with measured quiet one day after the other until the last day of a fine old age finds its goal of a well-used lifetime and you can go quietly to sleep. . . . Is not this wise, my friend, more rational? . . . Farewell and think of me after you are well and prospering”.
I like to think of this ideal attainment–of Hahnemanns man.
The criticism has many times been made that Hahnemann was autocratic, was unfriendly to his professional colleagues, was infact an enemy to the existing medical order. It is undoubtedly true that Hahnemann was dogmatic, and at times autocratic, yet many great men have held such traits. Yet in his inner heart, we know his true feelings when we recall his affirmation that all physicians were his professional brethren, and that he bore them no ill-will. It is likewise to his credit that, to all the stings and jibes of his critics he made no reply, save the one response to Hecker, “The Defense of the Organon”; and this was published under the name of his son, Frederick.
We are further reminded upon this point by Dr. William Boericke, of San Francisco, in reviewing Haehls recently published work, “The Life and Work of Samuel Hahnemann,” that, while this attitude of aloofness was most unfortunate, it had this redeeming compensation:
“His fifteen years at Coethen in comparative seclusion left him the needed quiet and freedom to develop the newly found truths, developing them according to his ideas of his wonderfully trained experienced and philosophical mind. A perfect organic whole is seen in the first edition of the Organon”.
Certainly Hahnemanns aloofness from his fellows could but have softened “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that were hurled against him by an unsympathetic world. The tender product of creation is hidden away in the mothers womb until such a time as it quickens and comes forth the child of law and circumstance. So of homoeopathy: Hahnemann had to protect it, nurture it, care for it in its embryonic stage, give it safe birth and protection until it could stand, as it does today four square against the buffetings and exigencies of the world.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.