thesis of hahnemann

The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843)

Document type.

Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, over a period of 33 years wrote four medical theses at three different universities. The first, in 1779 at the University of Erlangen, Franconia, dealt with agents that allegedly induce spasms, granting him a MD degree. The second two theses in 1784 dealt with obstetrical matters and were imposed upon him by the University of Wittenberg, Saxony, for becoming a medical officer, a position he apparently aspired to mostly for financial reasons. The fourth thesis in 1812 at the University of Leipzig, Saxony, his most elaborate dissertation on a toxic plant, white hellebore, served as a habilitation, allowing him to hold university lectures in order to disseminate his new ideas.

Journal Title

Journal of medical biography 2014,March 27 (2014). http://jmb.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/21/0967772014526347.full

Document's Licence

Faculties & collections, zugehörige orcids.

Samuel Hahnemann—Inventor of Homeopathy

First Online: 27 May 2024

Cite this chapter

Edzard Ernst 2

88 Accesses

Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) was born in Meissen, Germany. He studied medicine in Germany and Austria and received his doctorate in 1779 from the university of Erlangen. He practised as a physician but soon became disenchanted with the medicine of his time, which he felt was neither effective nor safe. Eventually, he stopped practising and lived by translating medical texts. In the course of this work, he came across a remark about the action of Cinchona bark which prompted him to do experiments on himself. These experiments eventually led to the creation of homeopathy. Hahnemann’s new therapy was controversial but soon became a worldwide success. When Hahnemann was about to retire at the age of 75, he was visited by a young woman from Paris. The two were soon married and Hahnemann started a new career in the French metropole, where he died in 1843.

The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy—to heal, as it is called. (Samuel Hahnemann)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as EPUB and PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Hahnemann, S. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann

Ernst, E. (2016). Homeopathy—The undiluted facts: Including a comprehensive A–Z lexicon . Springer.

Book Google Scholar

Campbell, A. (2013). Homeopathy in perspective: A critical appraisal . Anthony Campbell.

Google Scholar

Hahnemann, S., Dudgeon, R. E., & Boericke, W. (2019). Organon of homoeopathic medicine: The classic guide book for understanding homeopathy—The fifth and sixth edition texts, with notes . Adansonia Publishing.

Davidson, J. (2014). A century of homeopaths: Their influence on medicine and health . Springer.

Brief History of Life of Samuel Hahnemann, The Father of Homoeopathy, Homoeoscan. https://www.homoeoscan.com/2014/04/brief-history-of-life-of-Samuel-Hahnemann-The-Father-of-Homoeopathy.html

Gartlehner, G., Emprechtinger, R., Hackl, M., Jutz, F. L., Gartlehner, J. E., Nonninger, J. N., Klerings, I., & Dobrescu, A. I. (2022). Assessing the magnitude of reporting bias in trials of homeopathy: A cross-sectional study and meta-analysis. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, bmjebm-2021 , 111846.

Homeopathy, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australian Government. https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/resources/homeopathy

Brien, S., Lachance, L., Prescott, P., McDermott, C., & Lewith, G. (2011). Homeopathy has clinical benefits in rheumatoid arthritis patients that are attributable to the consultation process but not the homeopathic remedy: A randomized controlled clinical trial. Rheumatology, 50 (6), 1070–1082.

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Schmidt, K., & Ernst, E. (2003). MMR vaccination advice over the Internet. Vaccine, 21 (11–12), 1044–1047.

Yadav, R., Jee, B., & Rao, K. S. (2019). How homeopathic medicine works in cancer treatment: Deep insight from clinical to experimental studies. Journal of Experimental Therapeutics & Oncology, 13 (1), 71–76.

Ernst, E. (2023). Charles, the alternative king: An unauthorised biography . Societas.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

University of Exeter, Cambridge, UK

Edzard Ernst

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edzard Ernst .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Ernst, E. (2024). Samuel Hahnemann—Inventor of Homeopathy. In: Bizarre Medical Ideas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55102-4_12

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55102-4_12

Published : 27 May 2024

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-55101-7

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-55102-4

eBook Packages : Medicine Medicine (R0)

Samuel Hahnemann’s Life

Samuel hahnemann (1755-1843), “non inutilis vixi”, sheila gray.

Sheila is a British homeopath with a background in nursing, a degree in English Literature and Sociology from the Glasgow University; diplomas in several massage modalities and aromatherapy. She may be reached at Holistic Transformations

He was a delicate baby, so much so that he was christened only a few days later, on the 13th, when it is highly unlikely that anyone thought he would live to be a skilled linguist, chemist, doctor, and the founding father of a new system of healing known as homeopathy. Happily, he survived to live a full life, in fascinating times.

Samuel was born in the midst of the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, a time of free thinking and scientific rational thought. He lived into the Romantic Movement and Counter Enlightenment. A glance at the history of the period is like reading a who’s who of philosophy, science, literature and music. Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine, to name but a few. It was a period of exploration, discovery and rapid change with the Industrial Revolution, but also a time of conflict and war with The American Revolution, The French Revolution, and The Napoleonic Wars, to name but a few.

The year after Samuel’s birth, the Seven Year War (1756-1763) broke out. Frederick the second of Prussia was fighting Austria for Silesia. This war adversely affected the people of Saxony, especially so when Frederick used the porcelain and cloth that the area was famous for, to fund his campaign. It took the porcelain workers several years to recover, and since Samuel’s father, Christian, was a porcelain painter, the family fortune suffered.

Because of this, Samuel’s early years of schooling were undertaken by his parents at home. The workers at the factory where his father worked told a visiting professor to the town, that Christian sometimes locked his son up with a problem when he went to work, expecting him to have solved it, or to have some insight into it, by the time he got back. Perhaps this unorthodox method of teaching bore fruit in later years when Samuel was working out how to improve the lot of suffering humanity.

Later, he went to the Town Elementary School in Meissen, where one of the teacher’s, Magister Johann Muller, was particularly impressed with his abilities. When he was almost fifteen, however, his father, a strict man of the Lutheran faith, and with a strong work ethic, took him out of school, having found employment for him in a grocery store in Leipzig. Samuel absconded and his mother had to hide him until she could be sure his father would welcome him. Possibly this is an indication that Samuel already knew himself well enough to know that this was not his path, and had the courage to do what had to be done, even if it risked the wrath of a powerful authority.

This incident coincided with Magister Muller becoming rector of the Prince’s Grammar School in Meissen which Samuel then attended, studying languages, mathematics, geometry and botany. In spring 1775, Samuel wrote his school dissertation, “The Wonderful Construction of the Human Hand”, and delivered it on Speech Day, a fitting topic for one about to embark on a medical career.

Shortly afterwards he returned to Leipzig, this time to study medicine. He paid for his studies by teaching German and French, and by translating Greek and English into German for better-off students. Help came from an anonymous benefactor in Meissen who paid for some of the lectures. It is in Leipzig, that the seeds of Samuel’s discontent with the medical profession of the time were sown, because he was not satisfied with some of the lectures, and attended them only selectively. He was also unhappy with the lack of practical facilities.

Late in 1777 he moved to Vienna to benefit from practical experience working under a Dr. Quarin, in the hospital of the Brothers of Mercy. Even though Dr. Quarin did not charge Samuel a fee, the financial situation became critical, maybe because the invaluable hands-on experience allowed less time for translation work. Help was once again at hand, this time when Dr. Quarin, introduced him to the Governor of Transylvania, Baron von Brukenthal who offered him a post as librarian and family physician.

Samuel stayed in Hermannstadt for a year and nine months, cataloguing books and manuscripts – including medical and alchemical works detailing substance preparation and purification in various languages – and gaining medical experience. The baron also introduced him to the Masonic Lodge. The young Hahnemann must have gained much knowledge, both scientific and esoteric/metaphysical, at this time that he would draw on in years to come.

He still had to finish his formal education, however, and left for the University of Erlangen where he obtained his Doctor of Medicine degree, specializing in botany, on 10th August, 1779.

Hahnemann’s first practice was in the copper mining area of Heddstedt in 1780. He did not stay long, and moved to Dessau the following year, where he met his wife Johanna, the daughter and step-daughter of apothecaries. She was a strong woman, and a staunch and supportive wife, even sacrificing her inheritance and selling her jewellery to keep them during his wilderness wanderings, where he made around twenty moves in as many years.

The reason for this was his disillusionment with the medicine of the times. Like the rest of the world, it was changing. The old ways were breaking down, and he felt that many doctors followed the proliferation of new ideas and treatments unthinkingly, also that many of the treatments, such as bloodletting, and the use of toxic substances in crude doses were cruel and abusive and did more harm than good. He was also critical of the attitudes adopted, especially towards mentally ill patients, and of the hygiene practices of the doctors and nurses.

It is impossible to present a true portrait of Hahnemann without mentioning that he spoke out against these practices with a sense of outraged indignation, and was, arguably, his own worst enemy with his criticisms of his peers, especially Broussais, and his followers: “… they killed gradually more millions than Napoleon ever slew violently in battle.” (The Organon, Paragraph 60. Footnote.) He suffered greatly for this, and experienced many trials and tribulations, and much hardship.

For a time he gave up practicing altogether, and earned a meager living as a translator of medical books and journals, which at least had the advantage of keeping him abreast of the latest developments. He also became a prolific writer of articles and books.

As well as this, he was continually studying and experimenting, looking for a gentler, more humane way of treating the sick. A pivotal point came when, in 1790, he translated A Treatise on Materia Medica by the Edinburgh doctor, William Cullen who stated that Cinchona Bark (Cortex peruvianus) cured malaria because of its tonic effect on the stomach. Hahnemann believed that it cured malaria because it was capable of producing similar symptoms in healthy people.

This led him to study poisonings, and to experiment with the Peruvian bark on himself, by taking it twice daily and recording the symptoms he experienced. They were all those usually associated with intermittent fever. This was the first “proving” – the name given to the systematic process of ascertaining the range of action of a homeopathic medicine.

Another important development came in 1796 when his “Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Power of Drugs and Some Examinations of Previous Principles,” was published in Hufeland’s Journal of Practical Medicine . For the first time, Similia similibus , is mentioned – like with like – to cure a disease, medicines that cause similar symptoms in the healthy human body must be used.

It is in another article in Hufeland’s Journal, in 1807, “Indications of the Homeopathic Employment of Medicines in Ordinary Practice,” that he first uses the word derived from the Greek homoios –similar, pathos – disease or suffering.

But it is in The Organon that the principles of his new system of healing are fully expounded. It was published in five editions over Hahnemann’s lifetime, and is really a portrait of a work in progress, based on clinical experience. The first edition was published in 1810, and was called The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing . Thereafter, it was called The Organon of the Healing Art . Hahnemann completed a sixth edition before he died, but it was not published until 1922. If a life is a soul’s work in progress, then the sixth edition is the finished vision.

The Organon is laid out in numbered sections called paragraphs that are referred to below. Italics are used where they are used in The Organon . The capitals are mine. The following are lesser, but nonetheless, important topics or themes addressed in the text:

Paragraphs 1 and 2 demonstrate his Hippocratic ideals, by stating the AIMS and OBJECTIVES of the physician. “The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy – to heal, as it is termed…. The highest ideal of therapy is to restore health rapidly, gently, permanently; to remove and destroy the whole disease in the shortest, surest, least harmful way, according to clearly comprehensible principles.”
The need for “pure experiment” (Paragraph 25) and adherence to SCIENTIFIC METHODS and PRINCIPLES.
The importance of PUBLIC HEALTH measures (Paragraph 77) such as good living conditions and healthy lifestyle on the part of the patients, and on clean, hygienic practices by the doctors and nurses.
The importance of proper NUTRITION. (Paragraphs 125, 260, 262, 263, 266 especially) He published a two volume tome “The Friend of Health,” in 1792 and 1795, based on the principles of hygiene and dietary measures.
The PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT of the physician, who is exhorted to “KNOW THYSELF” (Paragraph 141) and to engage in REFLECTIVE PRACTICE. (Paragraph 61)
CASE-TAKING and COMMUNICATION SKILLS in which the physician adopts the role of “UNPREJUDICED OBSERVER,” (Paragraph 6), who takes each case in accordance with the guidelines given in Paragraphs 83 – 99. These instructions include:
A PATIENT CENTRED APPROACH. The physician is to rely on his own observational skills, and also to glean what he can from relatives and friends, but must listen especially carefully to the words of the patient (Paragraph 98)
The HUMANE TREATMENT of the INSANE. Paragraphs 210 – 230.
The importance of CORRECT PREPARATION of MEDICINES. (Paragraphs 245 – 285) He wrote a four volume Pharmaceutical Lexicon . (1796).
The MIND-BODY LINK. (Paragraph 210.) “The so-called emotional and mental diseases …do not constitute a class of diseases completely separate from all others, because in so-called physical diseases the emotional and mental state is always affected.”

All of these concepts are part and parcel of the training of today’s health care professionals, but in Hahnemann’s day, they were revolutionary. Of course, he was not the only one seeking to take the human race to higher heights. For example, Pinel (1745 – 1826) in France was also seeking to improve the treatment of the insane, Jenner (1749 -1823) was a contemporary, and Pasteur (1822 – 1895), Lister (1827 – 1912), and Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) were soon to follow.

A study of his life shows how the seeds sown in the minds of more enlightened, caring, compassionate people in tune with the spirit of the times, took root and grew. They demonstrate how he, and others, worked from the heart, but harnessed the mind to tap into the unfolding Divine idea.

There is also much in The Organon about the treatment of ACUTE AND CHRONIC DISEASES, EPIDEMICS and FEVERS, and about the SUPPRESSION of SYMPTOMS, PREDISPOSITION, SUSCEPTIBILITY and MIASMATIC factors. Hahnemann believed that the psora (skin, scabies, underfunction) was the most important weakness, but also mentioned the sycotic miasm (gonorrhoea, overfunction), and the syphilitic miasm (distorted function). Of course, AAB and DK have much more to say about this and other topics mentioned by Hahnemann in Esoteric Healing.

All of the above concepts are very much part of his homeopathic theory of disease and its treatment, but the crux of his work is that he believed there was a SPIRIT-LIKE DYNAMIS, a VITAL FORCE or PRINCIPLE that was the essence of man:

“In the state of health the spirit-like vital force ( dynamis ) animating the material human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty. It maintains the sensations and activities of all the parts of the living organism in a harmony that obliges wonderment. The reasoning spirit who inhabits the organism can thus freely use this healthy living instrument to reach the lofty goal of human existence.” (Paragraph 9)

He also says: “Without the vital force the material organism is unable to feel, or act, or maintain itself. Only because of the immaterial being (vital principle, vital force) that animates it in health and in disease can it feel and maintain its vital function. Without the vital force the body dies; and then, delivered exclusively to the forces of the outer material world, it decomposes, reverting to its chemical constituents.” (Paragraph 10).

He also believed that: “It is only the pathologically untuned vital force that causes diseases.” (Paragraph 12) This energetic untuning and the consequent disharmony that manifested as disease on the mental, emotional and physical planes, was often the result of a trigger factor that he termed the exciting cause (Paragraph 5), resulting not just in one single symptom, but in a total symptom picture, or TOTALITY OF SYMPTOMS that was “the outer image expressing the inner essence of the disease, ie. of the disturbed vital force.” (Paragraph 7) He maintained that if the exciting cause, or the sustaining or maintaining cause, could be removed or dealt with, that the vital principle could regain its equilibrium.

Where medicine was needed, however, he postulates that: “In the living organism a weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished by a stronger one, which, though different in nature, nevertheless greatly resembles it in expression.” (Paragraph 26)

So here we have the concepts of dynamics – energy, and of resembles – similars.

First of all, resemblances, the Law of Similars, or like cures like. Hahnemann believed that only a substance that caused a symptom, or pattern of symptoms in a healthy person, could cure those same symptoms in a sick one.

Secondly, dynamics. Hahnemann believed that the medicine had to be dynamised, or potentised before it could affect the spirit-like vital force. In Paragraph 269 he says: “Similarly, by the trituration of a medicinal substance and the succussion of its solution ( dynamisation, potentization ) the medicinal forces lying hidden in it are developed and uncovered more and more, and the material is itself spiritualized, if one may use that expression.”

So when a medicine that matched the totality of symptoms was energized to a high enough potency, it would heal the disease.

In the final paragraphs of the Organon (286 – 291) Hahnemann finishes with a more general discussion of energy. He mentions mineral magnetism, electricity and galvanism, but that too little was known about them. Mesmerism was another controversial method of treatment at that time. Hahnemann seemed to be against the more extreme forms of it, but he could see that there was something in it, because it did help some people, and he even seemed to have quite an understanding of how it worked. He also saw the energetic value in massage therapy.

However controversial he may have been, Hahnemann was a pioneering thinker, and a server of humanity. He felt for the suffering people with his heart, and was willing to deprive himself of the comfortable life he could have had, in order to use his mind to think of a more humane way of helping them.

To do so, he drew on a wide variety of sources. He believed in deism, popular at the time, and was influenced by vitalism and other old ideas that were recirculating. It is to the ancients in general, and Paracelsus in particular, that the idea of similars must be credited. The principle of the vital force is similar to the Indian prana, or the Chinese chi. Hahnemann provided the synthesis, drawing them all together in his system of homeopathic medicine.

In his later years, he did reap the rewards of his extensive labours. He taught homeopathy at Leipzig University. To do so he had to present a paper, which he did to an auditorium packed with friends and foes, on the historical medical use of White Hellebore (Veratrum album) and Black Hellebore (Helleborus niger). He impressed them with his linguistic and scholastic abilities by quoting from publications in eight languages.

Unfortunately his rants against orthodoxy meant that attendance at his lectures dwindled, but he did have a big enough following to take the beloved homeopathy that he considered a divine gift from the Creator, all over the world. He also had enough support from a number of young doctors, to form a proving group which greatly accelerated the work of proving, or determining the therapeutic value of the remedies. The results of these he published in six parts in his Materia Medica Pura between 1812 and 1821.

Once again though, he was forced to move because of a court action lodged by some physicians and apothecaries, which was upheld and made it almost impossible for him to practice. The Duke of Anhalt-Kothen, however, came to his rescue, and allowed him to work in his little principality.

Johanna died in Kothen. That, and the tragedies that befell so many of their eleven children – including two of their daughters being murdered – were blows to Hahnemann. Despite the public conflicts, his personal life was relatively harmonious. He found solace in his family.

In typical Hahnemannian, unorthodox and controversial fashion he remarried. His new wife was the young Parisian artist, Melanie d’Hervilly. They moved to Paris and enjoyed a thriving practice. Once again there was controversy. Melanie got into trouble for practicing medicine without a license.

Yet she assisted him in his service to humanity. They treated everyone from very rich to very poor. As always, Hahnemann only charged if he helped people, or made a significant difference, and had a sliding scale of fees from rich to poor, once again showing the egalitarianism of this man, who considered the lowliest of men his brother.

Samuel Hahnemann was a microcosm of the macrocosm, in that his life was very much a reflection of the spirit of the times. He was a combination of scientific rationalism in the precise, methodical way he carried out the provings and insisted on precision in the pharmaceutical process, but there was an element of mystical romanticism in his high ideals and belief in the spirit-like vital force.

Just as he was born, almost on the cusp of midnight, with his life in the balance, so there has always been a fine balancing of pairs of opposites in his life: violent opposition – true disciples; rational science – romantic idealism; public controversy – personal harmony; need for change – resistance to change; yet remaining ever focused toward the goal.

Another trend in his life was that of deferred gratification. The value of his work did not receive immediate recognition. It was the same in death. Melanie did not allow visitors to his sickbed. Nor did she announce his passing or the time of his funeral. He died in the early hours of 2nd July 1843. His funeral, in the pouring rain, was attended by only a handful of people. It was not until 1898 that he was reinterred with full civic honours. Inscribed on his tombstone, at his request, are the words “non inutilis vixi” – I have not lived in vain.

Hahnemann’s work fit into the unfoldment of the Plan, and added to the development of human consciousness, because it began to explain the link between energy and disease. He was ahead of his time, a forerunner.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the theosophists helped this understanding by bringing the chakra system to the west. Since then there have been remarkable developments in scientific knowledge of the glandular system linked to these energy centres, as well as in-depth explanation of cellular metabolism. Understanding of the Chinese system of medicine has also helped, as has research into the nature of energy in the field of quantum physics and work on the properties of water. Once again, many of these concepts are expounded by AAB and DK.

As yet, similar to the way in which Hahnemann’s work was received at the time, there is not broad acceptance from the mainstream. The controversy continues. Yet homeopathy survives, even thrives, and evolves. Perhaps this century will bring further revelation, allowing it to come of age, and to earn the place that Hahnemann so passionately believed it deserved – as medicine for the new man.

References:

Bailey, Alice, A. Esoteric Healing . Lucis Press, 1953. ISBN: 0-85330-121-1.

Braden, Gregg . The Divine Matrix . Hay House, 2007. ISBN: 978-1-4019-0573-6.

Cook, Trevor . Samuel Hahnemann – His Life and Times . 3rd Edition, 2008. (1st Edition, 1981) .B. Jain Publishers, Ltd. New Delhi. ISBN: 978-81-319-0619-4

Emoto, Masaru . Messages from Water and the Universe . Hay House, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-4019-2746-2.

Hahnemann, Samuel . Organon of Medicine . 6th Edition. (1842) A new translation by Jost Kunzli M.D., Alain Naude and Peter Pendleton. London, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1991. Translation copyright, 1982 by The Hahnemann Foundation. ISBN: 0-575-03880-2.

Handley, Rima . A Homeopathic Love Story – The Story of Samuel and Melanie Hahnemann . 1990. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California. ISBN: 1-55643-049-3.

Milgrom, Lionel . May the (vital) force be with you! – Homeopathy, Star Wars, and the rise of ‘fantasy physics.’ Homeopathy in Practice, Spring, 2010. Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

Morrell, Peter . Hahnemann Homeopathy from Romanticism to Post-Modernism . Homeopathy International, Winter 2002. Homeopathic Medical Association.

Partington, Theresa . Madness, mesmerism and moral treatments, or, to what extent did the Organon reflect contemporary attitudes to the mentally ill? Homeopathy in Practice, Spring 2010. Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

Whitney, Jerome . The Evolution of the Organon . Homeopathy in Practice, Spring 2010. Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

Share what you read:

Barbara seideneck.

Homeopathy School International • 727 Sheridan Ave • Loveland, CO 80537, USA • 970-685-4613

HSI is a non-profit 501(c)(3), Approved and Regulated by the State of Colorado, Division of Private Occupational Schools, Department of Higher Education.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning is young.

A Brief Biography of Samuel Hahnemann by Peter Morrell

A Brief Biography of Samuel Hahnemann Samuel Hahnemann was the third child [of five] and eldest son of a pottery painter in the porcelain town of Meissen in Saxony. As a child, he showed a remarkable aptitude for study [Cook, 28], excelling both in languages and in science; he was fluent in English, French, Greek and Latin. Even "at the early age of 12 he helped his master to teach Greek," [Haehl, vol. 1, 13] to other students. Hahnemann was "a pupil of exceptional ability," [Cook, 24] with "an exceptional talent for languages; " [Haehl, vol. 1, 13] he "was drawn irresistibly towards science and research ." [Haehl, vol. 1, 14] University of Leipzig Student Years At Easter 1775, he enrolled at the University of Leipzig to study medicine, but he soon became disappointed with its poor facilities, as medical students at Leipzig had "neither clinic nor hospital at their disposal." [Haehl, vol. 1, 20] While there, and to enhance his meagre income, he undertook translation work for a fee, such as translating four books from the English [Cook, 33], and teaching French to a wealthy Greek man [Haehl, vol. 1, 11] "in order to help him earn his living ." [Haehl, vol. 1, 19] He declined to engage in the social life with other students [Cook, 33]. Vienna. Early in 1777, he transferred as a medical student to Vienna, to gain greater clinical experience, though this proved very costly on his paltry allowance. After only nine months [October 1777], and after being robbed [Haehl, vol. 1, 11, 20], financial hardship forced him to abandon his studentship. However, he had so deeply impressed the physician to the royal court, Professor von Quarin [1733-1814], that he secured for him a secondment to practise medicine for a rich patron in Transylvania, the Governor of Hermannstadt [now Sibiu, Romania], Samuel von Brukenthal [1721-1803]. As family physician and curator of the museum and capacious library, Hahnemann stayed there for 18 months cataloguing the Governor�s coin collection [Cook, 35; Haehl, vol. 1, 11], ancient books and manuscripts, one of the finest collections in Europe of texts on alchemy and magic. While there, he had "the opportunity of learning several other necessary languages and of acquiring knowledge of some collateral sciences ." [Haehl, vol. 1, 11] Upon leaving Hermannstadt in the Spring of 1779, he "was proficient in Greek, Latin, English and Spanish." [Cook, 35] Hahnemann submitted a thesis on Cramps [ Conspectus adfectuum spasmodicorum ; Cook, 36] and registered for the degree of MD at Erlangen [Cook, 36] in August 1779 after only one term�s further study. He chose Erlangen "only because he had learned that the fees there would be less. " [Haehl, vol. 1, 24] What he did or where he lived during 1779-80 is unknown [Cook, 38; Haehl, vol. 1, 27], but in 1781, he took a village doctor�s position in the copper-mining area of Mansfeld, Saxony [Haehl, vol. 1, 26]. He obtained various medical positions during 1780-83, but soon after his marriage [1782] he became increasingly disenchanted with the imperfections of medical practice, [Haehl, vol. 1, 29, 33; Cook, 47, 52] and turned once again to translation work to enhance his modest income and to feed his growing family. Dresden Dresden On moving to Dresden in 1784, and by this time hugely dissatisfied with the harmfulness and inefficacy of medicine, he gave up medical practice entirely to devote himself to translation work on a full-time basis. In Dresden , "Hahnemann...practised his profession only to obtain definite proofs against it." [Gumpert, 49] In 1784 "...he translated Demarchy�s "The Art of Manufacturing Chemical Products" from the French. It was an elaborate work in two volumes, to which he made numerous additions of his own ." [Gumpert, 34] As a result, he willingly endured great poverty: " Hahnemann at this time, 1790, was poor ," [Bradford, 47]. His "struggle with poverty," [Haehl, vol. 1, 34] reduced him to the merely passive role of a scholar of the medical past and a translator of medical texts; " his translation work gave him meagre support...in the year 1791, poverty compelled him to move from Leipzig to Stotteritz, " [Bradford, 51]. " He reduced himself and his family to want for conscience sake, " [Bradford, 36]. He soon came to be highly regarded as a translator of scientific and medical texts from French and English for the Dresden Economical Society. At this stage, his future as a respected translator for the scientific community, was assured: "the more definitely Hahnemann passed into oblivion as a doctor, the greater grew his reputation as a writer on medical subjects. Orders for translations poured in on him from Leipzig ." [Gumpert, 58] In spite of honours heaped upon him by some learned societies [Haehl, vol. 1, 35], could such a fate have even remotely satisfied the ambitions and talents of this man? When Hahnemann says, "in Dresden, I played no prominent part ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 31] he means no prominent part in medicine, because he was chiefly a passive translator and scholar and engaged in the raising of his growing family. William Cullen�s Materia Medica Wandering Years Curiously for one so qualified, throughout the next twenty years or so, a strange wanderlust drove him [Haehl, vol. 1, 48] to drag his growing family, from town to town, never staying in one place for more than a few months or a year. For example, in 12 years from 1792-1804, he lived in fourteen different towns. During this important phase of "his restless wandering life, " [Haehl, vol. 1, 23] he was a lonely figure, thoroughly disgusted with medicine [Cook, 52; Haehl, vol. 1, 64] and completing many translations for his sole income. Between 1777 and 1806 he translated 24 large textbooks and numerous articles into German, usually accompanied with extensive footnotes and detailed corrections of his own. Hahnemann "sat at his desk writing until his fingers were sore. There was no more talk of medical practice. The doctor was a fanatic devotee of the quill pen, who now drowned his sorrows over his lost medical career in a sea of ink." [Gumpert, 61] During these "restless years of wandering, " [Haehl, vol. 1, 13] Hahnemann was the while developing his ideas and publishing essays based upon his studies. In what was undoubtedly a crucial period of his life, and not apparent to the outer observer, his medical views were undergoing a revolution as he slowly accumulated evidence for radically new medical concepts and methods, which would, in due course, significantly change his future course in life. His "whole intellect was in a state of ferment�and complete internal revolution ." [Haehl, vol. 1, 48] Haehl gives a very sound analysis of the problem. Hahnemann was "distracted by mental labours, which drove him restlessly from town to town. " [Haehl, vol. 1, 48] Once he had finished "wrestling with his thoughts," [Haehl, vol. 1, 48] and " the work of the mind accomplished ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 48] then his "peace and tranquillity returned of their own accord." [Haehl, vol. 1, 48] His particular �mental labours� undoubtedly concerned his abandonment of medicine and his search for safer and more efficacious medical concepts and methods. However, what was crucial about his wandering years, for his future work, was that through translation work, he could begin to scrutinise every idea and method in medicine ever advanced, and evaluate its usefulness and efficacy. Translation work opened up for him new medical worlds, which he could inspect and contemplate as evidence in his own search for medical enlightenment. It was in 1790, while translating William Cullen�s Materia Medica that the first evidence emerged for the great things still to come. Unconvinced by Cullen�s theory that Cinchona was a specific for Malaria because of its tonic action on the stomach, Hahnemann decided to take a small dose of Cinchona over several days to observe its effects. In this first proving experiment, Hahnemann observed symptoms broadly similar to those of malaria, including spasms and fever. [Cook, 59; Haehl 37, 39] With Cinchona, he had "produced in himself the symptoms of intermittent fever, " [Haehl, vol. 1, 39] which suggested to him a medical principle. He thus established anew the validity of an old therapeutic maxim: �like cures like� or similia similibus curentur. With his family and friends, he then undertook further drug provings. "Day after day, he tested medicines on himself and others. He collected histories of cases of poisoning. His purpose was to establish a physiological doctrine of medical remedies, free from all suppositions, and based solely on experiments." [Gumpert, 92] In his search for new remedies to prove, "Hahnemann sent his children into the fields to collect henbane, sumach, and deadly nightshade. They grew up like young priests of the Asclepieion of Cos...they felt the leaves, blossoms and tubers with small but expert hands...everyone was obliged to join in the work...for there was no other way to succeed in his titanic plan of rescuing the wealth of natural remedies from the quagmire of textbooks, and displaying it in the bright light of experience." [Gumpert, 93-94] His family and friends became central to his task: "the family huddled together; and every free moment of every one of them, from the oldest to the youngest, was made use of for the testing of medicines and the gathering of the most precise information on their observed effects." [Gumpert, 114] The results of his investigations were meticulously catalogued: "Hahnemann neatly and conscientiously assembled and numbered his observations of the symptoms excited in himself and his children by the most varied of medicines." [Gumpert, 114] However, another fifteen years elapsed before his thinking, study and experiments finally bore rich fruit. In 1796, his Essay on a New Principle consolidated the work with Cinchona, extending it into a general principle applicable for all drugs, and this laid the foundation for a complete system of medicine based on similia. By 1796 he was also practising medicine again, but "he did not charge for the medicines which he produced himself. " [Cook, 77] In summary, we can see that the essence he had distilled from his wandering was: single drugs in moderate doses, employed for conditions seen when they are proved on healthy volunteers. From this alone, he was inspired to commence a lot of writing of his own. Torgau Torgau In 1804, with "this restless inclination for travelling ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 47] finally expended, he settled in Torgau, "for seven whole years ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 72] - 1804-1811 - and began to write a series of important essays: all "his chief works were produced in the Torgau period," [Haehl, vol. 1, 74] within which every detail of his new system was taking shape. Into these essays were instilled everything he had discovered in his restless wandering, deriving from his provings, his thinking and his studies. His Fragmenta de viribus [1805] presented the first published details of 27 provings, including Pulsatilla, Ignatia, Aconite, Drosera and Belladonna. [Cook, 95] "...Hahnemann�s "Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis." was published in Latin. This two-volume work gives us, for the first time, an insight into the remarkable, and so far unknown, methods of investigation, which he employed. It supplies reports on the tests of twenty seven medicines the results of years of experiment on himself and his family ." [Gumpert, 122] From the considerations he had arrived at in his wandering years, Hahnemann had sought to develop a medical system that relied solely on single drugs in harmless doses and based upon pure observation, empiricism and experiment. He sought to "do away with the blind chimney sweeper�s methods of dulling symptoms, " [Gumpert, 99] then so much in vogue. He fought "with redoubled energy for the purity of medicine. He struck deadly blows at three points: first, he believed that the doctor should prepare his own medicines; second, he advocated ever more definitely the administration of small doses; and, third, he was a most passionate opponent of mixed doses that contained a large number of ingredients ." [Gumpert, 96] Torgau Then came The Medicine of Experience in 1805, which was in every respect a forerunner of his Organon . His other essays of 1805, 1808 and 1809, amount to magnificent critiques of every mode of medical treatment and discussions of why similia and single drugs are superior, and always have been. These were soon followed up with his Materia Medica Pura [1811] and Organon [1810], which proved to be great landmarks in the establishment of homeopathy: "...the "Organon of the Art of Healing" is presented in sections after the manner of a legal code. [Its]...sections manifest the notable and intimidating terseness of legal paragraphs, which, despite their unequivocal and final character, can scarcely be understood without prolific commentaries ." [Gumpert, 133] Likewise, his radical experiments with dose reduction, commenced in 1798 and endlessly revised throughout his long life. The first decade of the nineteenth century saw an unprecedented outpouring of original texts, as soon as his wandering had ceased. This veritable dam-burst of literary activity was obviously preceded by two decades of study, experimentation and hard thinking. In 1806, his last translation, from the Latin, of Albrecht von Haller�s Materia Medica [Haehl, vol. 1, 73], signalled the end of the first phase of his life: the study of the views of others, and the beginning of a new phase: of being his own man, and of formulating and defending his own views. Homeopathy, therefore, had a somewhat protracted �birth,� emerging in pieces: between "1790 and 1805�homeopathy was slowly coming to birth." [Haehl, vol. 1, 48] Of his stay in Torgau, it can be said that Hahnemann had, through his detailed and exhaustive studies, at last laid out a systematic and point-by-point demolition of every element in ancient and medieval medicine, leaving single drugs and similars as the only useful remnants. From these simple crumbs, combined with his experiments, he was able to build brilliant essays leading directly to the Organon , which is his detailed exposition of the whole conceptual and practical realm of homeopathy. Leipzig Leipzig In 1812, Hahnemann moved back to Leipzig, "the Saxon Athens ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 96] with a new confidence and the chief intention of taking on the allopathic establishment. He was returning, "pre-eminently as a teacher�to declare publicly�what he had discovered." [Haehl, vol. 1, 96] He obtained a teaching post on the faculty of the university medical school after defending a thesis on Hellebore, which quoted scores of ancient works in most European languages [Cook, 101; Haehl, vol. 1, 97]. Such was the vast extent of Hahnemann�s knowledge of the medical past and of languages. Quoting from "more than fifty�doctors, philosophers and naturalists ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 97] he was able "to show his extraordinary knowledge of languages�[and] to quote verbatim from manifold German, French, English, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic medical writers." [Haehl, vol. 1, 97] Such a performance was hugely impressive to the academics present. Yet, his lectures to students, though starting out well, soon degenerated into a predictably caricatured performance with long-winded and bitter assaults upon the medical mainstream, which had Hahnemann ranting and raving like "a raging hurricane against the old methods," [Haehl, vol. 1, 98] and which saw his students dwindle to single figures. By unleashing such "uncontrolled and abusive attacks on contemporary medicine�he became incoherent and lost the sympathy of his audience. " [Cook, 105] Consequently, "his audience lessened every hour and finally consisted of only a few." [Haehl, vol. 1, 98] For example, the winter semester 1820-21 "had been attended by only seven students." [Haehl, vol. 1, 120] This situation inevitably weakened his position in the university. Imagine if, by contrast, his course of instruction had been very popular, with swarms of students, then it would have been very difficult for the professors to attack him. That was sadly not to be. Orthodox attacks upon him and upon homeopathy became increasingly coordinated, amounting to a "vicious campaign of persecution," [Cook, 124] which soon reached such a pitch as to make his life in Leipzig almost intolerable. He was "neglected and avoided by the students," [Haehl, vol. 1, 117] and was "obliged to leave Leipzig ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 118] because of "this continuous antagonism of the medical profession and the governmental decree about self-dispensing," [Haehl, vol. 1, 118] of drugs, which very effectively barred him from further legal medical practice. Though he had achieved a lot, of leaving Leipzig some might say "Hahnemann felt himself to be almost excluded�[and] once more resolved upon migration ," [Haehl, vol. 1, 117] as the most dignified solution. The house of Coethen. Coethen By the end of 1820, he had therefore resolved to leave Leipzig. This was eventually achieved through protracted negotiations with the kindly Duke Ferdinand of Altona-Coethen. Hahnemann finally obtained in April approval from the Duke for a position in Coethen, and moved there in June 1821. [Cook, 25] This edict also allowed Hahnemann to do precisely what he had been denied in Leipzig: "to prepare his own medicines." [Haehl, vol. 1, 120] The comfort that must have brought would have seemed like a blessing from Heaven. He remained in Coethen with his wife and daughters, Charlotte and Louisa, in �splendid isolation� for fourteen years [1821-1835]. Meanwhile, he continued to publish essays and books, updating his Organon , and Materia Medica Pura . His publication in 1828 of The Chronic Diseases , opened up an entirely new chapter by exploring the underlying causes of disease as rooted solely in three ancient dyscrasias: skin diseases [Psora], gonorrhoea [Sycosis] and Syphilis. From "frequent observations, Hahnemann had discovered that chronic maladies�had some connection with a previous outbreak of Psora." [Haehl, vol. 1, 138] This �miasm theory� stirred up great controversy among his followers, and seems to have instinctively elicited much more ridicule than it did praise. To Hahnemann, Psora was "a disease or disposition to disease, hereditary from generation to generation for thousands of years, and�the fostering soil for every possible diseased condition. " [Haehl, vol. 1, 144] The theory "did not receive unanimous support from his followers, even after Hahnemann�s death." [Haehl, vol. 1, 150] At the same time, he sought to have 30c potency established throughout homeopathy as the standard [Haehl, vol. 1, 321-2]. In this endeavour, he failed dismally, because the majority of his contemporaries preferred tinctures and 3x, while others, like Jenichen [1787-1849], Korsakoff [1788-1853] and Schreter [1803-1864], were busy raising potency to heights way beyond his wildest dreams [Haehl, vol. 1, 321-2]. Melanie D�Hervilly Gohier Second Marriage On 8 th October 1834 [Cook, 164], four and a half years after the death of his first wife, Johanna, a new lady entered his life: Melanie D�Hervilly Gohier [1800-1878], a young, attractive and well-connected French artist, who paid him a surprise visit in Coethen. Over forty years younger than him, she became first his patient, then his homeopathy student and then his lover. They were married on 18 th January 1835 in Coethen [Cook, 166] and moved to Paris on 7 th June [Cook, 168]. "And the old man from another land came to know this wonderful city of Paris as a vision from the Arabian Nights. He came to know its mysterious magic formula, which combines the maximum of freedom with the strictest observance of tradition ." [Gumpert, 234] Their love affair and marriage caused a sensation among his German colleagues and neighbours, and scurrilous local "newspaper reports attempted to ridicule the marriage ." [Cook, 168] "When this strange marriage had taken place, and had been sufficiently discussed, a storm of slander and vilification broke like a cloudburst." [Gumpert, 219] On Hahnemann�s departure for Paris, "his daughters moved back into their father�s house, where they lived until their death. " [Haehl, vol. 1, 131] They were not very fond of Melanie. Whatever we might make of her behaviour or motives, he repeatedly stated in letters how happy he was with Melanie in Paris: "better and happier than I have been for years ." [Haehl, vol. 2, 375] It is also certain that in those final, blissfully happy, eight years of his life, he established a thriving medical practice in Paris with his young wife, becoming a celebrity and the preferred physician of the rich and famous, as well as giving free treatment to the poor. He and Melanie made a fortune together, allegedly four million francs in eight years [Haehl, vol. 2, 344-5]. She will ever remain an enigma. Melanie was, for her enemies , "an ambitious and self seeking intellectual...[but] for the man who loved her, a gentle, wide eyed, enchanted crea ture." [Gumpert, 222] She "never left his side. She mastered his casebooks, all the symptoms and most obscure notes of the Materia Medica Pura, as none of his pupils had ever done. She became a living compendium of homeopathy ." [Gumpert, 241] Although Hahnemann had introduced the smelling of remedies, or Olfaction, in 1832 [Haehl, vol. 1, 181], but it was during this last phase of his long life that he established Olfaction and the LM potencies as central pillars of his Paris practice. They are mentioned in detail in his final Sixth Organon [1842], which, however, did not see the light of day until 1922 [Haehl, vol. 1, 86-7]. In old age, Hahnemann "grew thinner and more dwarflike. His knees bent in slightly; his torso was thrust forward, both when he walked and when he stood still...but the head, which ever more and more dominated the body, remained erect and sovereign ." [Gumpert, 238] It was also in Paris where he made the last revisions of the Fifth Organon in February 1842, though it was never sent to a publisher [Haehl, vol. 1, 241, 286]. It is also clear that his Paris years were filled with continuous experimentation, [Haehl, vol. 1, 327-8] especially regarding dosage, potency and mode of administering remedies. It was at this time that he devised the liquid doses and LM potency scale [Haehl, vol. 1, 329]. Hahnemann died in Paris of bronchitis, 2 July 1843 and was buried first in Montmartre, but later reinterred in a more grandiose tomb, paid for by American subscription, in the more prestigious Cimiti�re Pere Lachaise, where many famous people are buried [e.g. Edith Piaf and Chopin]. Partly through attracting great controversy, and partly through impressive clinical results, homeopathy spread rapidly in Europe, Russia, India and the Americas, where it always found the sympathy of the rich and titled, as a safe alternative to bleeding and purging. School of St. Afra - Prince's School - where Hahnemann studied in Meissen Most important works: Essay on a New Principle [1796] Are the Obstacles to Medical Practice Insurmountable? [1797] Cure & Prevention of Scarlet Fever [1801] On the Power of Small Doses [1801] Aesculapius in the Balance [1805] Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis [1805] The Medicine of Experience [1805] On the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine [1808] Observations on the Three Modes of Medical Practice [1809] Hellebore thesis [1812] Sources of the Materia Medica [1817] Contrast of Old and New Medical Systems [1825] Four essays on Cholera [1831] All these essays can all be read in his Lesser Writings edited by Dudgeon, some of which are viewable online at: http://www.minutus.org/ www.homeopathyfaq.com/index.htm Organon Materia Medica Pura 1 st edition 1810 Volume 1 1811 2 nd edition 1819 Volume 2 1816 3 rd edition 1824 Volume 3 1817 4 th edition 1829 Volume 4 1818 5 th edition 1833 Volume 5 1819 6 th edition 1842 Volume 6 1821 Further editions released 1816-1833 S. Hahnemann Significant dates in his life: 1755 10 April - birth 1775 to Leipzig University 1777 Spring - to Vienna 1777 October - to Hermannstadt 1779 Spring - leaves Hermanstadt for Erlangen University 1779 August - MD Erlangen 1782 Dec - marries Johanna Kuchler 1783 Henrietta born 1786 Frederick born 1788 Wilhelmina born 1789-1804 unhappy wandering in Saxony 1790 his mother dies; first proving with Cinchona 1791 Caroline born 1795 Frederika born 1798 Ernst born 1803 Eleonore born 1804 settles in Torgau for 7 years 1805 Charlotte born 1806 Louisa born 1811 Spring - moves to Leipzig 1820 loses legal battle in Leipzig to dispense his own drugs 1821 June - moves to Coethen 1830 30 th March - Johanna dies in Coethen 1834 8 th October - Melanie arrives in Coethn 1835 18 th January - 2 nd marriage 1835 7 th June � leaves Coethen for Paris 1835 21 st June � arrives in Paris 1842 Feb - composes the final 6 th Organon 1843 2 nd July � death Sources Thomas L Bradford, Life and Letters of Hahnemann, 1895 Trevor Cook, Samuel Hahnemann, the Founder of Homeopathy, UK: Thorsons, 1981 Robert E Dudgeon, The Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann, London: Headland & Co, 1895 Martin Gumpert, Hahnemann - the Adventurous Career of a Medical Rebel, New York: Fischer, 1945 Richard Haehl, Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Works, 2 volumes, 1922.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings
My Bibliography
Collections
Citation manager

Save citation to file

Email citation, add to collections.

Create a new collection
Add to an existing collection

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search, create a file for external citation management software, your rss feed.

Search in PubMed
Search in NLM Catalog
Add to Search

The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)

Affiliation.

1 Outpatient Department, Neurological Hospital, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg at Erlangen, Germany [email protected].
PMID: 24677564
DOI: 10.1177/0967772014526347

Keywords: Erlangen; Leipzig; Samuel Hahnemann; Wittenberg; graduation; medical thesis; university.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

Search in MeSH

Personal name as subject

Linkout - more resources, full text sources, other literature sources.

scite Smart Citations

Citation Manager

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.

The Eighteenth-Century Founder of Homeopathy Said His Treatments Were Better Than Bloodletting

Samuel Hahnemann was trying to fix the unscientific field of medicine

Kat Eschner

Although the field of homeopathy is most definitely not accepted by the medical community today , its founder was a doctor who was trying to create medical practices that were gentler on the body than, say, bloodletting.

Hahnemann, born on this day in 1755, was a Swiss physician and translator. “He was one of many physicians in the 1700s who set out to explore systematically the use and effects of medical drugs,” according to the Science Museum in London.

In the context of medical practice at the time, writes scholar Michael Emmans Dean in the journal History of Science, Hahnemann was trying to create a new system of medicines that “he believed to be more humane and effective than any known before that time,” he writes. It was a time when opium, blood-letting and alcohol were all common treatments for illnesses, and the field of medicine was only starting to catch up to the scientifically framed ideas of the Enlightenment.

Hahnemann's ideas stemmed from translating a work that dealt with the use of quinine in treating malaria, according to Encyclopedia Britannica . Hahnemann first observed that quinine’s effect of causing fever in a healthy person if taken was the same effect that malaria had on an infected person. “From this, Hahnemann developed the central idea of homeopathic medicine: the principle of ‘like cures like’ or the ‘law of similars’–an idea that was also central to folk medicine,” writes the museum.

He published an essay , followed in 1810 by the fundamental text of homeopathy, the Organon of the Rational Art of Healing , and homeopathy was born. The encyclopedia notes that Hahnemann “proved” his methods worked by administering the drugs to healthy subjects and watching for effects that would correspond to disease.

By 1821, local hostility to his practices resulted in him leaving the German city of Leipzig, where he was practicing, and he eventually ended up in Paris, “where he practiced medicine with great popularity until his death,” according to the encyclopedia.

The medical people who surrounded him in Liepzig were quick to disregard his ideas, Dean writes. “He was portrayed as a quack unable to earn a living from orthodox medicine, dishonest or insane and, in a dismissal extending to all who followed his precepts, as ‘too weak mentally to practice medicine or even to take care of himself,’” Dean writes.

Ironically, bloodletting and other such treatments eventually fell out of favor, but homeopathy is a thriving field today in spite of the medical community largely rejecting it. “Most rigorous clinical trials and systematic analyses of the research on homeopathy have concluded that there is little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific condition,” according to the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Kat Eschner | | READ MORE

Kat Eschner is a freelance science and culture journalist based in Toronto.

Samuel Hahnemann – BIOGRAPHY of Homeopathy’s Founder

Samuel Hahnemann’s father, an industrious but fortune-less painter on porcelain in the celebrated manufactory at Meissen, a charming little town on the banks of the Elbe, near Dresden, discouraged all his endeavors to qualify himself for a calling superior to that he himself pursued, though he seems in other respect to have had a great influence on the character of his exhortation to him exercise his independent judgment in all cases, and not to take anything on trust, but in every case to act as reflection told him was for the best `’Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,” was the substance of his advice. By this advice Samuel Hahnemann profited, and, notwithstanding his father’s prohibition to study, he pursued his strong inclination to do so in spite of all opposition and on occasion when it was thought he was sound asleep, Samuel Hahnemann was consuming the midnight oil over his books, in a lamp which he had himself constructed out of clay, as he was apprehensive being discovered had he used one of the household candlesticks. The little incident I have thought worth mentioning, as it exhibits his perseverance and indomitable steadfastness of purpose even at that early age. His aptitude for study excited the admiration of his schoolmaster, with whom be became a favorite, and who undertook to direct his studies, and encouraged him to a higher order of study than that constituted the usual curriculum of a Grammar School. This did not please his father, who several times removed him from the school and set him to some less intellectual work, but at length restored him to his favorite studies at the earnest request of his teacher, who, to meet the pecuniary difficult, instructed the Samuel until his twentieth year without remuneration.

“The longing of a Swiss for his rugged Alps,” he says, in an autobiographical fragment he has left behind him, “cannot be more irresistible than of a Saxon for his fatherland.” Accordingly to fatherland he went, and settled down to practice in a small town named Hettasted, but as there was no field for practice here, he removed, after three quarters of a year’s residence, to Dessau, in 1783. Here it was, he tells us, that he first turned his attention to chemistry; but at the end of this year he was appointed district physician in Gommern, wither he removed, and he married his first wife whose acquaintance he had previously made in Dessau, she being the daughter of an apothecary of that town; here also he wrote his first book on medicine, which gives the result of his experience of practice in Transylvania, and takes rather a desponding view of medical practice in general, and of his own in particular, as he candidly admits thet most of his cases would have done better had he let them alone. After remaining nearly three years in Gommern – where, he naively observes, “no physician had ever been before, and whose inhabitants had no desire for one” – he transferred his io Dresden; but with the exception of taking for a year the post of physician to the hospital during the illness of Dr. Wagner, he does not seem to have done much in the way of practice here. During the last years he lived in Dresden and the neighboring village of Lockwits he published many chemical works, the most celebrated of which is a treatise upon poisoning by arsenic, which id quoted to this day as an authority by the best writers on toxicology. This was probably the period he alludes to, in his letter to Hufeland, as that when he retired disgusted with the uncertainty of medical practice and devoted himself to chemistry and literature. That he made considerable progress in the former science, his valuable tests for ascertaining the purity of wine and of drugs and treatise on arsenic testify; and we have likewise the testimony of the Swedish oracle of chemistry. Berzelius, who, knowing well the value of v’s services to his own science, is reported to have said, “This man would have been a great chemist, had he not turned a great quack.” We may take Berzelius’s opinion as to Samuel Hahnemann’s skill in chemistry; but try his physic by other than chemical tests.

However, to return to our history Samuel Hahnemann seems to have had little or no opportunity to test his ideas by practice in Leipzic and the little village of Stottorits close by, and must have been completely occupied with his chemical lucubration’s and translation; for he wrote at his period a large number of chemical essays, and translated several chemical and other works, besides Cullen’s just named. He diligence must have been something extraordinary at this time, and no doubt his increasing family was a source of great anxiety to him, and caused him to slave to the extent of which we have evidence from his publication. How sorely the ‘res angusta domi’ must now have pressed on Samuel Hahnemann, longing as he was for the opportunity to pursue the investigations of which he had just discovered the clue, how his great but impatient soul must have chafed and fretted at that oppressive clog of poverty – that necessity for providing bread for the daily wants of his children, which hindered him from soaring on his eagle flight into unexplored – of regions discovery! And the poverty which Samuel Hahnemann endured was not merely an income so small as to prohibit and indulgence in the luxuries of life, but often, and actual want of the common necessaries of existence; and this with all anxiety of an increasing and helpless family of young children! And yet had it not been for his poverty, Samuel Hahnemann had probably never made the discovery on which his fame has built.. Naturalists tell us that the oyster forms the lustrous pearl found certain extraneous that intrude themselves within the cavity of its shell, and irritate and vex its tender flesh–and so it with the great and good; the vexations and annoyances of life are often the means of eliciting and developing those pearl of the mind that we admire and marvel at.

In 1795 he migrated to Wolfenbuttel, and thence to Konigslutter, where he remained until 1799. In this interval of comparative settlement he gave out the second parts of his Friend of Health and Pharmaceutical lexicon; and he had leisure to pursue his investigations and to write, in 1796, for his friend Hufeland’s journal, that remarkable Essay on a New Principle for ascertaining the Remedial power of Medicinal Substances, wherein he modestly but firmly expresses his belief that, for chronic diseases at least, medicines should be employed that have the power of producing similar affections in the healthy body ; and the following year he published in the same journal an interesting case illustrative of his views ; and wrote another essay on the irrationality of complicated systems of diet and regimen, and complex prescriptions. Several other essays followed this in rapid succession among which I may mention that on antidotes, and those on the treatment of fever and periodical diseases.” But already the hostility of his colleagues began to display itself. Samuel Hahnemann, who had now abandoned the complicated medication of absurdity of giving complex mixtures of medicines which he now invariably administered singly and along. The physicians of Konigslutter, jealous of the rising fame of the innovator, incited the apothecaries to bring an action against him far interfering with their privileges by dispensing his own medicines. It was in vain Hahnemann appealed to their letter and spirit of the law regulating the apothecaries business and argued, that their privileges only extended to the compounding of medicines, but that every man, and therefore still more every medical man, had the right to give or sell uncompounded drugs, which were the only things he employed, and which he administered, moreover gratuitously. All in vain; the apothecaries and their allies, his jealous brethren, were too powerful for him; and contrary to law. Justice, and common sense, Hahnemann, who had shown himself a master of the apothecaries’ art by his learned and laborious Pharmaceutical Lexicon, was prohibited from dispensing his own simple medicines.

The locality of the apothecaries and physicians of Konislutter drove him form that town in 1799. He purchased a large carriage or waggon, in which he packed all his property and family, and with a heavy heart bade to Koniglutter, where fortune had at length begun to smile upon him, and where he had found leisure and opportunity to prosecute his interesting discoveries. Many of the inhabitants whose health he had been instrumental in restoring, or whose lives he had even saved by the discoveries of his genius during that fatal epidemic of scarlet fever, accompanied him some distance on the road to Humburg, whither he had resolved to proceed, and at length, with a blessing for his services, and sigh for his hard lot, they bade him God speed, And thus he journeyed on with all his earthy possession, and with all his family beside him, But a dreadful accident befell the melancholy cortege. Descending a precipitous part of the road, the wagon was overturned, the driver thrown off his seat, his infant son so injured that he died shortly afterwards and the leg of one of his daughters fractured. He himself was considerably bruised, and his property munch damaged by falling into a stream that ran at the bottom of the road. With the assistance of some peasants they were conveyed to the nearest village, where he was forced to remain upwards of six weeks on his daughter’s account, at an expense that greatly lightened his not very well-filled purse. At length he got in safety to Humburg, but finding little or nothing to do here, he removed to the adjoining town of Altona. He did not, however, better himself by the change, and not long after removed to Mollen in Lauenburg; but the longing for his fatherland, which he describes as being so strong in him, soon drew him once more to Saxony. He planted himself in Eulenbur, but the persecution of the superintendent physicians of that drove him thence after a short sojourn. He wanted first to Machern, and thence to Dessau, where we find him in 1803 publishing a monograph on the effects of coffee, which he considered as the source of many chronic diseases, and against the use of which, as a common beverage, he inveighed with much the same energy as our first James did against tobacco. Previous to this, however, and during his wanderings, he had translated several books for the English, and written various articles on his favorite idea of medical reform in Hufeland’s Journal, denouncing ever more and more energetically the absurdities and errors of ordinary medical practice. One of the most remarkable articles in his style is his preface to a translation of a collection of medical prescriptions, published in 1800, which preface is the best antidote to the work itself. We can imagine his great soul fretting and fuming when the publisher, on whom he than almost entirely depended for subsistence, put into his hands the English original of this notable work, which contained naught but a collection of the abominable and nonsensical compounds which he had been inveighing against for the last five years. We can fancy Hahnemann saying, “Well, Sir, if you have no more agreeable work to put me to than this, I will do it; but mark, I stipulate to be allowed to write what preface I choose.” And sure a preface it is the most marvelous preface surely that was ever written for any book! It is as though he had said, “Reader; you have purchased this book thinking to find therein a royal road to the practice of physic, but you are miserably mistaken to believe there can be any such short cut: skill in practice can only be gained by careful, unwearied, and honest study; by having a perfect knowledge of the curative instruments you have to yield, and by an accurate observation of the characteristic symptoms of disease. As for the contents of this book, they are the grossest imposition ever palmed upon man, a confused jumble of unknown drugs- mostly poisons mixed together in what are called prescriptions, each ingredient of which is dignified by some imposing name that is meant to express to qualities it should possess and the part it should play, but none of which possesses the qualities attributed to it nor will obey, even in the slightest degree, he order that are given it. Every prescription contains in it a multitude of anarchical elements that totally disqualify it for any orderly action whatever. The best councel it can given you, my simple-minded reader, is to put the main body of this book into the fire; but by all means preserve the preface; it may serve you as a standard for judging of the pretensions of similar pretentious books, of which there be, I am sorry to think, many, too many in the market just now, but which we shell do our best, with God’s help, to rid the world of.” I do not believe the publisher of this “Arzneischats,” or “Treasury of Medicines,” would wish to give Hahnemann many more jobs of this kind to do, or if he did, he would doubtless resolve to bargain that no perfact should be inserted. Indeed. We find that Hahnemann’s translations came to rather an abrupt termination at this period, for, with the exception of a translation of the Materia of the great Alvert von Haller. Which he executed in 1806 Hahnemann’s works were henceforward all originals.

He was now settled on Torgan, and perceiving that the discoveries and labours met nothing but opposition, contempt, and neglect from his medical brethren, disdaining to reply to any of the odious calumnies that were heaped upon him by those who should have been proud of him us their countryman and colleague, his discontinued writing their medical journals, and appealed to the injustice of his professional brethren to the unprejudiced judgment of an enlightened public, and hence forth published his strictures on ancient medicine, and his projects for entitled the Allgemeiner Anzeiner der Deutschen. During the years 1806 and 1809, he published in that journals a succession of papers equal terseness, vigor and originality to anything he had previously written, which two deserve especial mention, viz, his essay on the value of the Speculative System of Medicine, and toughing and earnest letter to Hufeland, whom he never ceased to love and esteem, thought in every respect he was a much greater man and finer character than the Nestor of German medicines, as Hufeland was called. The doctrines which were scornfully rejected by the Scribes and Pharisees of the old school found favor with public, and the number of his admirers and non-medical disciples increased from day to day. In 1810 he published the first edition of his immortal Organon, which was an amplification and extension of his Medicine of Experience, worked up with greater care, and put into a more methodical and aphoristic form, after the model of some of the Hippocratic writings.

During his residence in Leipzic, from 1810, to 1821, he from time to time published valuable essays in the literary journal I have already alluded to, one of which was on a deadly from of typhus that broke out in 1814, in consequence of the disturbances caused by the stupendous military operations of that period, more Russia, And he departed one occasion from his usual habit, and wrote a couple of controversial upon the treatment of burns, for which he recommended warm applications in opposition to Professor Dzondi, who had advised the employment of cold water. A second edition of the Organon and five more volumes of Materia Medica appeared during this period, adding at once to his fame and to the perfection if his system, which began to attract the attention of many physicians and immense numbers of the educated and upper classes.

Under these discouraging circumstances the reigning prince of Alhalt Coethen, who was an the tiny capital of his tiny dominions, and according to Coethen Hahnemann proceeded in 1821. It must have been with a heavy heart that he left Leipzic, the goal of his youth’s ambition and scene of his manhood’s triumphs. It must have cost him a pang to leave that dear fatherland, for which he had always sighed in all his wanderings. To exchange the busy commercial and literary capital of northern Germany for the lifeless and dismal little town of a pretty principality was but a sorry exchange indeed; and the deserted ill-paved streets and rude envisions of the provincial town were a poor compensation for the lively and frequented promenades round Leipzic, where he was wont to walk every afternoon with his portly wife and numerous family. Though Leipzic his now the honour of containing his bronze effigies, and thought Leipzic’s magistrates and municipal authorities joined in the inauguration of Hahnemann’s monument in 1851, this will hardly suffice to efface the strain of bigotry and intolerance that attaches to the town and its authorities by their expulsion of the greatest of Leipzic’s citizen’s in 1821.

On the 10 th August, 1829, a large concourse of his disciples and admirers assembled at Coethen, for the purpose of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his reception of the Doctor’s degree, and the dull little town was enlivened for a moment by the festivities of which it was the scene. The same day Hahnemann solemnly found the first Homeopathic Society., under the name of the “Central Society of German Homeopathists,” which exists and flourishes to this day and by whose exertions it was that the bronze statue was last year (1851) erected at Leipzic, as a grateful memento to its illustrious founder.

In 1830 Samuel Hahnemann lost his wife, the mother of his numerous family, and the sharer of all the vicissitudes of his eventful life. It has been stated that his good lady had not the sweetest of tempers, and that she was somewhat of a Xantippe to our Socrates; but, as far as I can learn, there is no ground for this accusation. There is no doubt that she was a most affectionate wife and mother; but at the same time a strict disciplinarian, who asserted here supremacy over the domestic affairs and over her husband, in as far as he was part and parcel of the household; that Samuel Hahnemann loved and highly esteemed her we have ample evidence, from many passages in his letters, and from the testimony of his friends.

To facilitate our inquires as to what parts of the systems promulgated by Samuel Hahnemann belong to the domain of the unerring laws of nature, what derive a coloring and a bias from the individuality of the author, I think it is of great importance to endeavor to form a just estimate of his character and mental organization, and as I believe the circumstances of his life have exercised a considerable influence on his doctrines and percepts, and have contributed powerfully to the formation of his very remarkable character, I have not hesitated, at the risk of fatiguing you, to employ the time allotted this first lecture to lying before you the sketch of his life just read, and I shall now, with your leave, turn to a consideration of the character and mental constitution of the man.

His very first work of any importance, that on Syphilis, was, as he himself tells us, the subject of the most outrageous vituperations and abuse. Though this work was published long before he had any idea of homoeopathy, the views he promulgated with reference to the destruction by caustics of the primary sore, and the employment of very small quantities of a new mercurial preparation, running counter as they did to the prevalent notions on the subject, called forth the most unwarrantable abuse from his critics. The same thing happened on the publication of his Essay on a new Principle; and every other step in the progress of his great and beneficent discovery was greeted with similar discouragement. In 1799, the more practical annoyance of the apothecaries persecution was called into play, and the intrigues of his enemies drove him from place to place. With a large and increasing family to provide for, this system of persecution must have been the most painful and annoying to his feelings that could be devised. Wherever he went the espionage of the German Worshipful Company of Apothecaries accompanied him, and the moment he was detected dispensing his own medicines, a complaint was made on the part of that privileged guild that he was interfering with their vested rights. And it was no difficult matter to get evidence against him, for he held it to be indispensable to the right practice of his art to have the command over his own tools, and scorned to conceal that he dispensed his own medicines.

Another quality of Samuel Hahnemann’s mind conscientiousness, is strikingly displayed in his abandoning the lucrative practice of medicine when his faith was shaken in it and supporting his family for some time upon the proceeds of his chemical discoveries, and by the tenfold greater labour of translating book for the publisher. This quality is also shown in the refusal to adopt any mode of avoiding the persecution of the apothecaries, which he might readily have done, either by setting up an apothecary of his own or by dispensing his medicine secretly. Another, if possible, still more striking trait of conscientiousness which I have not found alluded to elsewhere, is this. After his first discovery of the homoeopathic therapeutic law, he contented himself for some years with making a collection of the morbid effected of various poisonous and medicinal substance from the writings and observations of the more ancient and the modern toxicologists and experiments. In this way he collected together a tolerable pathogenesis of many powerful substances, and on this basis he endeavored to practice. Samuel Hahnemann published the results of his first trial of his systems upon these data in 1796 and the two following years. But he soon found that the records of the toxicologists and others were inadequate to afford him sufficiently accurate pictures of morbid states corresponding to the nature diseases he had to treat, and he saw that there was nothing for it but to test the medicines and poisons accurately, carefully, and systematically upon the healthy individual. As yet he knew not if such trials might not be fought with danger to his constitution and shorten life; but he did not shrink from what he considered a sacred duty, and he boldly set about the gigantic task-a task, I may safely say, from which any ordinary mind would have recalled in dismay. How he executed his task I need not relate. The ten volumes of provings he has left us are an external monument to his energy, perseverance conscientiousness, and self-sacrifice. “When,” says he, “we have to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life, any neglect to make ourselves thoroughly master of it becomes a crime!”

As to his religious principles, Samuel Hahnemann was brought up in the Lutheran persuasion, but he could not be said to have adopted the tenets of that or any other sect of Christians. His principle, as we gather them from his works were nearly these:- He believed in the ruling providence of an all-good and all-bountiful God, and he held that every man was bound to his utmost to benefit each was endowed. He traced every good thing to the hand of the almighty and beneficent God, to whom he always gave all the glory for all the good he was enabled to confer on his brethren or mankind, and denied to himself any merit for what he had done.

The abnegation of all merit to himself for his many and irksome labours to perfect his art, and the humble acknowledgment of his gratitude and reliance on God, are strikingly shown in his memorable words upon his death-bed, the last utterance of which we have any record. Whilst suffering much from the pain and difficulty of breathing that attended his last illness, his wife said him. “As you in your laborious life and alleviated the sufferings of so many, and have yourself endured so much, surely Providence owes you a remission of all your sufferings.” To which the dying sage replied, “My! And why me! Man here below works according to the gifts and strength Providence has given him, and it is only before the fallible tribunal of man that degrees of merit are acknowledged, not to before that of God: God owes me nothing, but Him much-yes, everything.”

In its effects upon the established school of traditional medicine, the reformation of Samuel Hahnemann strongly resembles that of Luther on the Roman Catholic Church. Abused, vilified, persecuted, the young medical school has gone on gathering strength and securing the support of man distinguished for their learning and rank, until at length it has become a formidable rival to the antiquated system, which it threatens every day to extinguish. As Lather’s reformation sapped the foundation of the Roman hierarchy, so Hahnemann’s which it will than shaken the stability of the temple of Hippocrates, which it will eventually overthrow completely, and more effectually than Luther did the ancient Church, for experimental science is more sweeping in its effects than theological, and never rests until pillar of error is overthrown. As the Reformation had its pretenders and its fanatics, so has Homoeopathy its charlatans and its bigots; but as the impartial historian will not confound the error and delusions of the erratic religionists with the Reformation, so may we hope that the extravagant fancies and theories that have arisen out of Homoeopathy may not be confounded with the real spirit of Samuel Hahnemann’s great medical reform. Almost every great truth has its unworthy adherents, who like the parasitical plant, trifle and disfigure that whereto they cling and whereby alone they exist but as the great oak survives and remains erect the monarch of the forest, long after generations of those inferior creatures to which it gave support have withered away and crumbled into dust, so the truth that Hahnemann revealed will outlive the memory of its unworthy parasites, and emerge from their unwholesome embrace a stately tree, a beacon of hope and a source of health and happiness to hundreds of unborn generations of suffering mankind.

A Brief Biography of William Tod Helmuth, MD

Dr. S. P. Dey

George vithoulkas biography, about the author.

Internet Archive Audio

This Just In
Grateful Dead
Old Time Radio
78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
Audio Books & Poetry
Computers, Technology and Science
Music, Arts & Culture
News & Public Affairs
Spirituality & Religion
Radio News Archive

Flickr Commons
Occupy Wall Street Flickr
NASA Images
Solar System Collection
Ames Research Center

All Software
Old School Emulation
MS-DOS Games
Historical Software
Classic PC Games
Software Library
Kodi Archive and Support File
Vintage Software
CD-ROM Software
CD-ROM Software Library
Software Sites
Tucows Software Library
Shareware CD-ROMs
Software Capsules Compilation
CD-ROM Images
ZX Spectrum
DOOM Level CD

Smithsonian Libraries
FEDLINK (US)
Lincoln Collection
American Libraries
Canadian Libraries
Universal Library
Project Gutenberg
Children's Library
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Books by Language
Additional Collections

Prelinger Archives
Democracy Now!
Occupy Wall Street
TV NSA Clip Library
Animation & Cartoons
Arts & Music
Computers & Technology
Cultural & Academic Films
Ephemeral Films
Sports Videos
Videogame Videos
Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

Wayback Machine (iOS)
Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

Explore the Collections
Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Lesser writings

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

Graphic Violence
Explicit Sexual Content
Hate Speech
Misinformation/Disinformation
Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

11,697 Views

17 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

For users with print-disabilities

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by U.S. National Library of Medicine on March 3, 2012

Samuel Hahnemann and the Origins of Homeopathy

Conference: Medical History Seminar, University of Washington, Seattle

UCSF University of California, San Francisco

Discover the world's research

25+ million members
160+ million publication pages
2.3+ billion citations

Recruit researchers
Join for free
Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

Name Your Topic

Organon of Medicine & Philosophy

BIOGRAPHY OF DR. HAHNEMANN

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

This post contains the Biography of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann who is the founder/Father of the Homoeopathic system of medicine.

Before we go through the Theories and Aphorisms of Organon of medicine , we definitely need to know about a wonderful personality who built it.

Master Hahnemann introduced us with the Divine therapeutic science and art of curing people in a harmonic way.

In this post I have tried my best to picturise his life journey leading to the Discovery of homoeopathy .

So, let’s get started from the birth of him.

[Note: words with ( * ) are particularly defined at the end of this post].

Table of Contents

1.THE MEISSEN

• In the middle of the 18th century, there was a charming little town named Meissen situated on the bank of Elbe River (12 miles Northwest of Dresden city) in Saxony of Germany. • Meissen had about 4000 residents of which many were expert artists, chemists & painters. This town was famous for decorating China glass with colours, gold & painted pictures.

2. THE ECK-HAUS

• On 6th April, 1753 a man named Christian Gottfri ed Hahnemann bought and set up his household goods within its walls. • His house was known as Eck-Haus. • He was a porcelain painter & worked in a porcelain factory.

3. THE BIRTH

On the 10th April 1755 , his wife Johanna Christiana gave birth to their third child (of 5 children) & eldest son.
They named him as Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann.

4. EARLY DAYS OF CHILDHOOD

A) father as a preceptor.

Hahnemann’s father was a preceptor in his life & had a big influence on his character.
He had the soundest ideas of “What may be considered good & worthy” and he implanted them deeply on his son’s mind as well.

B) THE THINKING LESSONS

When Hahnemann was 5 years of age, his father had a habit of giving his son what he called as “ Thinking lessons ”.
This childhood habit followed him throughout his lifetime.

5. LIFE AT THE SCHOOL

• On 20th July 1767 He was admitted to the town school where he spent many years. • At the age of 16 years he moved to the Prince school of that town. • Rector of that school, Master Muller was his teacher in ancient languages & German composition treated him very affectionately, like his own son. He trained him in many languages. • Due to the poor financial family status his father forced young Hahnemann to leave the school & join at a nearby porcelain factory as a labourer. • But he re-entered in the prince school with the help of fellow students & staff. • In 1775 On the school leaving ceremony, Hahnemann presented a Latin oration called “The wonderful construction of human hand”.

6. LIFE AT LEIPZIG

• In the year 1775, at the age of 20 with just 20 thalers * in his pocket he entered Leipzig University for his medical studies. • Here he managed his earning by teaching French & German as well as translating books from English. • He became a master of almost a dozen languages like Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Arabic, German, Hebrew etc.

During the days of his boyhood, Hahnemann had the habit of taking frequent walks over the hills of his native town, and he also formed an herbarium of the plants of his beloved Saxony.
His favorite study was medical science.

7. LIFE AT VIENNA

• Early in 1777 he moved from Leipzig to Vienna as a medical student for further studies and joined the hospital, “Brothers of Mercy”. • Here he became favourite pupil of Dr. Von Quarin who was a physician of royal court & allowed to accompany him to his private patients. • He taught him many therapeutic hints. • But after only 9 months he had to abandon his studentship.

8. LIFE AT HERMANSTADT

I n 1777 October he was appointed as a librarian & family physician by Von Brukenthel (Governor of Transylvania).
Here he stayed for 19 months & learnt several languages & gave much time to philology * .

9. GRADUATION AT ERLANGEN

In 1779 at the age of 24 years, he received his master degree from Erlangen University.
He submitted thesis on 10th August 1779 which was published in 20 pages.
The subject of thesis was “A Consideration of Aetiology & Therapeutics of Spasmodic Affection”.

10. RETURN TO SEXONY AFTER DEGREE

In 1781 he started his first ever medical practice as a village doctor in a town named Hettastad in the country of Mansfield.
But there was not much scope for practice at there, so he moved to new house at Dessau , a place 50km from Hettastad.

11. AT DESSAU

Here he first turned his attention to chemistry.
He started translating original medical works to Germany & started to learn chemistry.
Here he regularly visited at the chemist shop of Herr Haseler , where he learnt practical pharmacy and chemistry.
And here he also met his future wife (Haseler’s step-daughter).

12. LIFE AT GOMERN

A) the marriage.

Gomern was a small town where our master was first physician who had ever been commenced the medical practice.
In 1782 at the age of 27 years on the 17 th of November he got married to Johanna Henrietta Leopoldine Kuchler (9 yrs. young).
In 1784 they had their eldest child, Henrietta.
In 1786 his 2 nd child (son) Fredrick was born.
They had 11 children during the years of 1783 AD – 1806 AD. (2 sons & 9 daughters.

B) FAMILY LIFE

He often joked with his children, sang cradle songs to the young ones, composed little poetry for them, and used every opportunity to instruct them.
Hahnemann was a great music lover with a pleasant singing voice.

C) FIRST ORIGINAL MEDICAL WORK

In 1784 he published an original book on the treatment of Scrofulous sores .
In 1785 he published a valuable translation of chemistry book of Demachy’s “ ART OF DISTILLING LIQUOR” in two volumes (Demachy was one of the first chemist of that time).
At that time, practicing hygienic habits were given little importance but he recommended,

-Exercise & open air.

-Benefits of climate change & seashore.

-The value of cold water as a remedial agent.

13. DISSATISFACTION WITH THE MODE OF PRACTICE

They stayed at Gomern for two years and nine months.
He was a sincere man and was greatly dissatisfied with indefinite medical knowledge and cruel methods of treatments of those days.
He almost stopped his medical practice.
He continued translating books to support his family.
In 1789 in order to fulfil his needs of growing family he moved to Leipzig due to poverty and released his first volume of “FRIEND OF HEALTH”.

14. LETTER TO HUFELAND

Hahnemann expressed his agony about wrong methods of treatment at that time to his friend Hufeland.
He wrote him a letter which was published in “Lesser writing” under the title of “Letter to a physician of high standing on the great necessity of a regeneration in medicine”.
Hahnemann called Hufeland as Nester of medicine.

15. THE YEARS OF WANDERING

For next 20 years a strange curiosity urged him to move his growing family from town to town.
They never stayed in one place for more than a few months or a year.
From 1792-1804 for about 12 years, he lived in 14 different towns.
Between 1777-1806 he translated 24 large textbooks & several articles into German.

Hahnemann used to sit at his desk writing until his fingers were sore.

Even though these wandering years were restless and lonely to him as a medical person to, they were obviously a crucial period of his life.
Because his views of the medical science were undergoing a revolution. Translation work helped him to observe and analyse thoroughly in his own search for medical understanding.

16. DISCOVERY OF HOMOEOPATHY

discovery-of-homoeopathy by Dr. Hahnemann

It was the time in 1790 Hahnemann was busy in translating Dr. William Cullen ’s * “ A TREATISE ON MATERIA MEDICA” from English to German.
In this book there were 20 pages allotted for curative effect of the Peruvian Bark (Cinchona Bark) for the intermittent fever.
It was explained that the curative power of it was due to its bitterness in a small footnote to this chapter.
Hahnemann was not satisfied with this explanation so he wanted to experiment on it.
He took 4 drams of Cinchona Bark extract twice daily for several days and he observed malaria like symptoms including fever and spasms.
He repeated the same experiment on himself to confirm before coming to final conclusion.
He conducted similar experiments on his friends and other volunteers.
As he expected, all of them had the same symptoms like malaria fever.
Which led him to an old therapeutic saying “ Similia Similibus Curentur ” which means “Like Cures Like”.
Days after days he continued proving of other medicines on himself and others.
He collected histories of poisoning cases to prove physiological principles of remedies.
He used to send his children into the fields to collect Henbane * , Sumach * , Belladonna * etc.
Everyone in his family and friends joined him from Youngest to Oldest.
They gathered most accurate information on their observed effects.
In 1796, his “Essay on New Principle” which started from the work with Cinchona extended to general principle applicable on all drugs became the foundation for the complete system of medicine based on LAW OF SIMILARS.
He restarted practicing medicine.
But he never charged for medicines produced by himself.
Between 1790- 1805 Homeopathy was slowly coming to birth.

WHAT IS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SIMILAR AND SIMILIMUM ?

17. LIFE AT TORGAU

In 1804 he finally settled in Torgau for whole 7 years.
From 1804-1811 he commenced to write important essays one by one.
At Torgau every inch of details of his new system of medicine were getting in shape.
In 1805 he published “Fragmenta de Viribus * ” in which details of 27 provings including Aconite, Belladonna, Drosera, Ignatia, Pulsatilla etc. were included.
Then came “The Medicine of Experience” in 1805 which was the precursor of an Organon.
Then followed by Organon in 1810 & Materia Medica in 1811.
By the first decade of 19th century his wandering had ceased.

Hahnemann advocated three points very firmly. First – Doctors should prepare his own medicines. Second – Administration of small doses. Third – He was a passionate rival of mixed doses with many ingredients at a same time.

18. RETURN TO LEIPZIG

In 1812 he moved back to Leipzig with new confidence and chief intention of opposing the allopathic foundation.
He obtained a teaching post as the faculty of university medical school.
In starting, his lectures to students went well but soon due to his uncontrolled and bitter assaults on medical methods of that time students found him confused and discontinued to attend his lectures.
Eventually his position in university became weak.
He had to suffer ruthless attacks of mistreatment upon him and homeopathy by orthodox minds.
Continuous opposition of the medical profession and government decree about self-dispensing of drugs made his life in Leipzig almost intolerable.
By the end of 1820, he had to leave Leipzig.

19. LIFE AT COTHEN

A) continuation of work.

He obtained an approval from the Duke for a position in Cothen and moved there in June 1821.
This decree * also permitted him to do exactly what he had been refused in Leipzig. TO PREPARE HIS OWN MEDICINE.
He lived in Cothen with his wife and daughters Charlotte and Louisa for 14 years (1821-1835).
On the other hand, he continued to publish Essays & Books by updating his Organon and Materia Medica Pura.
In 1828 his publication of “THE THEORY OF CHRONIC DISEASES” made revolutionary changes.
He explained that causes of the chronic diseases are planted entirely upon 3 ancient dyscrasias (imbalance). 1) Skin diseases (psora) 2) Gonorrhoea (sycosis) 3) Syphilis.
This Miasm theory provoked a great controversy among his followers.

B) THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE

For 48 years, she had been his faithful companion in his all wanderings, supporting him in his studies & always taken care for him and family.
At the age of nearly 67 years, Hahnemann’s wife died on 31 st March of 1830.
She was ill with liver abscess that burst into the lungs.

C) THE SECOND MARRIAGE

After the death of the wife, he had continued to live a very quietly in the house at Cothen, well taken care of by his daughters, devoting his time to his large practice and medical researches.
On 8 th Oct 1834, A young, attractive and well-connected French artist lady paid him a surprised visit in Cothen.
Her name was MARIE MELANIE D’HERVILLY-GOHIER .
She was 40 years younger than him, became his patient, then his homeopathic student and then his lover.
So, on the 28 th of January 1835 they got married in Cothen.
Then they moved to Paris on 7 th June 1835.

20. LIFE AT PARIS

A) the last practicing years.

Hahnemann lived his final, blissful happy Eight years of his life at Paris.
He established his medical practice with his young wife.
Melanie never left his side.
She mastered his casebooks, all the symptoms and most uncertain notes of Materia Medica Pura.
She became a living collection of Homeopathy.
Hahnemann established the smelling remedies and the LM potencies as central pillars of his practice in Paris.
His last years were filled with experiments on Dosage, Potency and mode of administration of remedies.
He made the last revision of the Fifth Organon in February 1842 (but it was never sent to a publisher)

B) THE LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH

Around 15 th of April 1843, he was attacked by the Bronchial catarrh.
Memorable words by him in death bed with sincerity,

“GOD OWES ME NOTHING, BUT I OWE GOD MUCH, YEA ALL.”

A chest affection liberated his spirit from his old weary body.
He died in his 89 th year of life , at his house in Rue de Milan, Paris at 5 o’clock on Sunday morning, 2 nd July, after an illness of six weeks.
His remaining are presently laid in madame Hahnemann’s family vault at Montmartre.
The Epitaph * on his tomb- “NON INTUTILLIS VIXI” (I Have not lived in vain).

Meissen was situated on the Elbe River bank. Father’s Name- Christian Gottfried Hahnemann. Mother’s Name- Johanna Christiana. Name of the birth house- The Eck-Haus. Full name- Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann. Siblings- Total five, he was third and eldest son. 10th April 1755- Birth date. 20th July 1767- Got admitted to town school. 16 years of age- Moved to the Prince school. 1775- Presented a Latin Oration. 1775 at the age of 20- Got admitted in Leipzig university for Medical Studies. 1777- Moved from Leipzig to Vienna to join a hospital. 1779 at the age of 24 years- Got Master Degree from Erlangen University. 1781- First ever medical practice started at Hettastad. 17th Nov 1782 at the age of 27 years- Got Married. Wife Name (First)- Johanna Henrietta Leopoldine Kuchler (9 yrs. young). 1783- Henrietta born 1784- An original medical book on treatment of Scrofulous sores. 1785- Demachi’s Art of Distilling Liquor. 1786- Frederick born 1788- Wilhelmina born 1789- Moved to Leipzig; First volume of Friend of Health. 1790- His mother dies; first proving with Cinchona. 1791- Caroline born. 1795- Frederika born. 1796- Essay on New Principles. 1798- Ernst born. 1803- Eleonore born. 1804- Settled in Torgau for 7 years. 1805- Charlotte born; Fragmenta De Viribus; Medicine of Experience. 1806- Louisa born. 1812 – Moved back to Leipzig 1820- Loses legal battle in Leipzig to dispense his own drugs. 1821 to 1835- Moved to Cothen & stayed there for 14 years. 1828- The theory of chronic disease. 1830 30th March – Johanna dies in Cothen. 1834 8th October – Melanie arrives in Coethn 1835 18th January – 2nd marriage. Name of second wife- MARIE MELANIE D’HERVILLY-GOHIER. 1835 7th June– Leaves Coethen for Paris. 2nd July of 1843– He Died at the age of 89 years.

REFERENCE TERMINOLOGIES

Philology – A branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language. Thalers – The thaler was a large silver coin first made in the year 1518 used throughout the Europe for 400 years. The Thal means valley in German, and the thaler named after the Joachimsthal (Joachim’s valley) The dollar is named after the thaler. Belladonna/ Deadly nightshade – Flowering plant of Solanaceae family which includes potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants etc. Henbane – A poisonous Eurasian plant also known as Hyoscyamus niger. Sumach – A small tree with compound leaves, green flowers in clusters and red hairy fruits. Dr. William Cullen – He was an authority on allopathic materia medica of Hahnemann’s time, he was an experienced lecturer, a talented chemist and brilliant popular teacher in Edinburgh. Fragmenta de Viribus – 1805, “Fragmenta de Viribus Medicamentorum Positivis”, published in Latin in two volumes. Contained details on experiments of 27 remedies from the years of proving on himself, family and friends. Decree – An official command by force of law. Epitaph – A brief statement at a tomb or a grave in memory of the one buried there.

TQ soo much mam we are very grateful for your work .

Really helpful for study

There are so much Datta on the great master of Homoeopathy Dr Hahnemann in a shortest place. Sure, it is great job for the belove and student of the homoeopathy.

I appreciate your comment…Thanks.

Really helpful 👍

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE PART 2

STAY CONNECTED

Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

According to the study conducted by Ganz et al. (2018), from 700,000 to 1 million patients suffer from falls annually. Halter (2013) distinguishes four types of falls: accidental, unanticipated physiological, anticipated physiological, and intentional ones. Indeed, some falls do not lead to any severe consequences, and patients only get a bruise. However, in some cases, a fallen patient receives a concussion or suffers a broken bone. The older generation is particularly in danger of falling due to age. The probability that a patient could fall rises if he has weak muscles, cognitive, mobility or visual impairments, obesity, or could understand instructions properly (Halter, 2013). Besides, even if a person is in good health, he could become a victim of a slippery floor, an imperceptible doorstep, a poorly designed staircase, or his inattention.

Hospitals undertake various strategies and policies to prevent patients from a threat of falling. The Hahnemann falls policy is a peculiar example of what a hospital might do to protect its patients well-being and minimize falls risk. The author of the Hahnemann falls approach, Halter (2013), developed a falls risk assessment that enables nurses to estimate the probability that a person will fall. If a patient’s score is lower than 25, he is at low risk of a fall (Halter, 2013). If a patient gained 25 to 44 points in the assessment, he is at moderate risk (Halter, 2013). A score of more than 45 points implies that a patient is highly likely to fall (Halter, 2013). In addition to that, nurses should consider medications prescribed to the patients. Patients taking blood thinners, diuretics, sedating antihistamine, skeletal muscle relaxants, narcotic analgesics, laxatives, anti-seizure medications, and benzodiazepines are at elevated risk for falls (Halter, 2013). Therefore, the Hahnemann falls policy’s critical message is that nurses are obliged to carefully and objectively assess the health conditions of a patient to determine whether he is at risk for falls.

The Hahnemann falls policy also describes measures directed at the prevention of falls for patients at low, medium, and high risks. For example, Halter (2013) recommends offering patients “toileting facilities close to patient offering assistance with toileting every hour while awake” (p. 4). Nurses should also “assign patients to beds that permit exiting on patient’s stronger side when possible” and engage them in diversional activity (p. 4). Patients at high risk for falls should wear yellow identification marks and no-slip socks and employ a bed check device (Halter, 2013). Nurses should regularly check the hydration status of such patients and check if their beds are “secured and locked in low position” (Halter, 2013, p. 4). The brief outline of critical ideas reveals that the Hahnemann falls policy is comprehensive and covers all aspects of the issue of falls risks mitigation, and provides a clear set of rules that protect patients from a fall.

In spite of the fact that the policy is well-designed, there are several suggestions on how it could be updated. First of all, in the policy, it is stated that patients with visual, mobile, and cognitive impairments are highly likely to suffer from falls. However, it seems that such people require even more attention than described in the section dedicated to the mitigation of high risks for falls. For example, it might be suggested that whenever such a person decides to go for a walk, go to the toilet, or leave the bed for whatever reasons, he should be accompanied by a nurse. However, the critical problem of this suggestion is that the workload of nurses prevents them from being able to control the movements of every patient. At the same time, there is no other choice to protect a person who cannot take care of himself.

Another significant reason for revision could be derived from the previously mentioned study conducted by Ganz et al. (2018). The scholars conclude that effective practice of fall prevention is impossible if the staff members do not possess profound theoretical and practical knowledge on how to prevent falls (Ganz et al., 2018). Furthermore, the medical personnel should bear responsibility for fall prevention (Ganz et al., 2018). In other words, this recommendation emphasizes the importance of continuously and adequately educating nurses and developing their skills. Besides, in the modern times of technological development, it is vitally important not to miss new inventions and new strategies that could increase safety of the patients.

From the previously mentioned recommendation, it could be inferred that the Hahnemann University Hospital should conduct the assessment of nurses knowledge on how to prevent falls regularly. In addition to that, the hospital’s administration should measure the progress and check if the number of injuries caused by falls increases, decreases, or remains the same. These measurements will allow the administration to understand if the nurses move in the right direction. At this point, it should be mentioned that the administration should estimate the number of injuries provoked by falls every month. Nurses might be tested less often – every three or four months. However, it is necessary not to forget that the decrease in the number of falls might be insufficient at the very beginning of implementing new recommendations. In such a case, it is necessary to be patient and not abolish new policies.

The necessity to review the existing policy aimed at preventing falls is driven by the fact that science develops continuously. The hospital should regularly monitor the existing practices and experiences of other hospitals and or recommendations proposed by the government and medical associations. Even though the current policy undertaken by the Hahnemann university hospital is sound, it does not mean that there is no space for improvement. The fact that the number of injuries caused by falls is still significant signalizes that a hospital should pay more attention to the issue.

To sum up, the current paper examined the Hahnemann falls policy. The conducted analysis reveals that the measures suggested by the Hahnemann hospital are comprehensive and well-thought. The policy describes a detailed strategy on how to assess the risk of every patient suffering from falls. The policy also contains recommendations on what nurses should do to help patients at the high, medium, and low risks for falls and how to behave if an accident had happened. Despite these strong sides, one could notice that the hospital does not give significant attention to the nurses education and regular measuring of the number of falls. The policy suggested by the Hahnemann university hospital will become even more effective if it makes nurses responsible for the incidents and motivates them to gain new knowledge in this field.

Ganz, A., Huang, C., Saliba, D., Shier, V., Berlowitz, D., Lukas, C.V., Pelczarski, K., Schoelles, K., Wallace, L.C., Neumann., P. (2018). Preventing falls in hospitals. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality . Web.

Halter, M.P. (2013). Falls Prevention and Resource. Hahnemann University Hospital . Web.

Relation Between Nervous and Endocrine Systems
Suicide Risk Factors in Adolescents
Florida Department of Health: Business Plan
The Dangers of Tanning Beds
Nursing Home Beds: Fundamental Uncertainty and Values
Development Opportunities in the “New” NHS
The Impact of a Long-Term Isolation
Occupational Epidemiology: Exposure and Dose Modeling
Effective Therapies for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Readmission in Hypertension and Heart Failure Patients
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, June 30). Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy. https://ivypanda.com/essays/analysis-of-hahnemann-falls-policy/

"Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy." IvyPanda , 30 June 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/analysis-of-hahnemann-falls-policy/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy'. 30 June.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy." June 30, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/analysis-of-hahnemann-falls-policy/.

1. IvyPanda . "Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy." June 30, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/analysis-of-hahnemann-falls-policy/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy." June 30, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/analysis-of-hahnemann-falls-policy/.

COMMENTS

The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
Abstract. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, over a period of 33 years wrote four medical theses at three different universities. The first, in 1779 at the University of Erlangen, Franconia, dealt with agents that allegedly induce spasms, granting him a MD degree. The second two theses in 1784 dealt with obstetrical matters and were ...
Samuel Hahnemann
Hahnemann's thesis was titled Conspectus adfectuum spasmodicorum aetiologicus et therapeuticus [A Dissertation on the Causes and Treatment of Spasmodic Diseases]. [10] [11] Medical practice. In 1781, Hahnemann took a village doctor's position in the copper-mining area of Mansfeld, Saxony. [12]
The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
Samuel Hahnemann, medical thesis, university, graduation, Erlangen, Leipzig, Wittenberg First: Doctoral dissertation of 1779 at Erlangen Samuel Hahnemann (Figure 1) was born at Meißen, Saxony, on 10 April 1755 at a time when medical sci-ence was in its infancy, bloodletting a widespread prac-tice and evidence-based approaches well-nigh
The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, over a period of 33 years wrote four medical theses at three different universities. ... [Edition and commentary of the patients' journals by Samuel Hahnemann]. University of Essen, PhD thesis, 2005. Google Scholar. 24. Hahnemann S. Organon der Heilkunst. ['Organon of the art of healing ...
The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
Abstract. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, over a period of 33 years wrote four medical theses at three different universities. The first, in 1779 at the University of Erlangen ...
The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, over a period of 33 years wrote four medical theses at three different universities. The first, in 1779 at the University of Erlangen, Franconia, dealt with agents that allegedly induce spasms, granting him a MD degree. The second two theses in 1784 dealt with obstetrical matters and were imposed upon him by the University of Wittenberg, Saxony ...
PDF Hahnemann From Homeopathy to Heilkunst
Lux and the Thesis of Equality The Modest Author (Lux's Pamphlet) Hahnemann's Views on Isopathy and Isopathic Remedies Chapter 5: The Case for Dual Remedies ... Chapter 55: Hahnemann's Case-taking of the Old School Mentality - Ideogenic Disease THE DYNAMIC STATE OF MIND (HEALTH) Chapter 56: Therapeutic Approaches Within Heilkunst ...
Samuel Hahnemann—Inventor of Homeopathy
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) was born in Meissen, Germany. He studied medicine in Germany and Austria and received his doctorate in 1779 from the university of Erlangen. ... In Erlangen, he submitted his MD thesis and received a doctorate on 10 August, 1779 stating : "I will frankly admit that the short time I had in preparing this ...
Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work
Works and Essays written by Hahnemann during his Sojourn . 105: CHAPTER XI . 113: To Appease the Apothecaries . 123: 80 . 148: 84 . 158: The Fate of the Work on Chronic Diseases . 173: Hahnemanns Letters of Thanks . 182: 91 . 184: Fredrick Hahnemann in the Erzgebirge . 188: CHAPTER X . 193: The Study of Homoeopathy . 198:
Samuel Hahnemann
Samuel Hahnemann. 1755-1843. German Physician. Samuel Hahnemann is regarded as the founder of homeopathy, a controversial type of medicine that revolves around the principal that "like cures like," or that a disease can be cured by medications that produce the symptoms of that disease in healthy people.. Hahemann was born in Saxony (now part of Germany) in 1755.
Samuel Hahnemann's Life
So close to midnight, that there is debate as to the date, Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was born, in the town of Meissen, Saxony. The church register recorded his birth as being on the 11th April 1755, but Samuel always celebrated his birthday on the 10th. As the story of his life unfolds, this is a pertinent fact to bear in mind ...
PDF Essay on A New Principle for Ascertainting the Curative Powers of Drugs
The original German work, „Essay on a new principle for ascertaining the curative powers of drugs", was first published in 1796. The English edition on hand was translated and edited by R.E. Dudgeon in New York and published in 1852 by William Radde. The following extracts are particularly relevant to the debate concerning the fundamentals ...
A Brief Biography of Samuel Hahnemann
Hahnemann submitted a thesis on Cramps [Conspectus adfectuum spasmodicorum; Cook, 36] and registered for the degree of MD at Erlangen [Cook, 36] in August 1779 after only one term's further study. He chose Erlangen "only because he had learned that the fees there would be less. " [Haehl, vol. 1, 24] What he did or where he lived during 1779 ...
The four medical theses of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, over a period of 33 years wrote four medical theses at three different universities. The first, in 1779 at the University of Erlangen, Franconia, dealt with agents that allegedly induce spasms, granting him a MD degree. The second two theses in 1784 deal …
Remembering Dr Hahnemann: The Founder Of Homeopathy
The subject of his thesis was: A Consideration of the Aetiology and Therapeutics of Spasmodic Affections. The wedding bells rang, and Dr Hahnemann married Johanna Henrietta [1782]. He moved to Gommern, and published his medical essays in the second volume of Kreb's Journal — including a book on the treatment of scrofulous sores [1784]. This ...
The Eighteenth-Century Founder of Homeopathy ...
Hahnemann, born on this day in 1755, was a Swiss physician and translator. "He was one of many physicians in the 1700s who set out to explore systematically the use and effects of medical drugs ...
Hahnemann as a medical philosopher
Hahnemann's dynamization, in the light of later science, must be held untenable; but to this day we have nothing to put in its place. And, even if we had, we should not the less honour the philosopher who perceived the necessity of the explanation; who brought to light the hitherto unknown phenomena, and set us to work at giving a scientific ...
Samuel Hahnemann
When a candidate defends his thesis, he was what are called opponents among the examiners, who dispute the various opinions preached in the thesis; but the most of Hahnemann's opponents were schooled such an amiable state of mind by this display of learning, that they hastened to confess they were entirely of his way of thinking, while a few ...
Lesser writings : Hahnemann, Samuel, 1755-1843
Translation of various essays. Skip to main content. Ask the publishers to restore access to 500,000+ books. A line drawing of the Internet Archive headquarters building façade. ... Hahnemann, Samuel, 1755-1843; National Center for Homoeopathy (U.S.), donor. DNLM; American Foundation for Homoeopathy, former owner.
Samuel Hahnemann and the Origins of Homeopathy
The theory and practice of homeopathy are inextricably linked to the personality and life experiences of its founder, the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). The essay sketches this ...
BIOGRAPHY OF DR. HAHNEMANN
This post contains the Biography of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann who is the founder/Father of the Homoeopathic system of medicine. Before we go through the Theories and Aphorisms of Organon of medicine, we definitely need to know about a wonderful personality who built it. Master Hahnemann introduced us with the Divine therapeutic science and art of ...
The Inside View of Hahnemann Closure
"The Hahnemann closure highlights a larger problem. Whether you have commercial payers or a single-payer system, if there is not enough reimbursement for care to pay the bills, health systems simply cannot stay afloat. At the end of the day, the Hahnemann closure represents a failure of society to cover the necessary costs of care for our ...
Analysis of Hahnemann Falls Policy
The Hahnemann falls policy is a peculiar example of what a hospital might do to protect its patients well-being and minimize falls risk. The author of the Hahnemann falls approach, Halter (2013), developed a falls risk assessment that enables nurses to estimate the probability that a person will fall. If a patient's score is lower than 25, he ...