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Homeopathic Biographies |
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Samuel Hahnemann(10th April 1755 - 2nd July 1842) -- R. E. Dudgeon, M. D. |
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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. The jealousy of his professional brethren however, led them to incite the privileged guild of apothecaries to play the same game that had proved so successful in expelling Hahnemann from other places, and their machinations were only stayed for a time by the arrival in Leipzic of the celebrated Austrian Field Marshal, Prince Schwarzenberg, who came thither avowedly with the design of placing himself under Hahnemann’s care, as his life was desiderable of by the first practitioners of the old school. At first considerable amendment ensued, but his disease, which was some organic affection of the brain or heart, eventually had a fatal termination. Of course a cry was now got up that Hahnemann’s method hastened if it did not actually cause the death of illustratious commander, and the apothecaries, taking advantage of the unpopularity which this catastrophe, and the mode in which it was "improved" by his medical brethren, cast upon Hahnemann found now little difficulty in obtaining an injunction against his dispensing his own medicines. Hahnemann could not write prescriptions his own medicine, seeing that the privileged apothecaries did not keep them and could not be trusted with their preparation, as they were his bitterest foes. His practice was therefore gone, and though he was urgently advised to dispense his medicines secretly, yet he had too great a respect for the authority of the law to act contrary to the verdict of those business it was to enforce it, even although he believed that they misinterpreted its spirit. Nothing was left for him therefore but to quit Leipzic, a town which was now endeared to him by many pleasing associations connected with the development of his great reform, and his fatherland Saxony, now offered no place where the most illustrious of its sons could live in peace. 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. The favour of the Duke, who appointed him Hofrath and physician in ordinary to his serene person and court, could scarcely make up to Hahnemann for the loss of the disciples whom he used to instruct and the friends who used to assist him in his provings; and his habits which had never been very sociable, now become more than ever retired. After setting at Coethen he seldom crossed the threshold of his door except to visit his patron when he was sick; all the other patients who flocked to Coethen for his advise he saw at his own house, and his only walks were in a little garden at the back of his house, which he used jocularly to observe, though very narrow was infinitely high. Here he daily promenaded for a certain time as regularly as he had done in the pleasant Leipzic alleys, and every fine day he used to take a drive in his carriage into the country. He devoted himself entirely to practice and the development of his system. His amazing industry and perseverance never flagged an instant; he worked incessantly, it might be said. Here he published a third, a fourth, and a fifth edition of his Organon and a second and third edition of his Materia Medica each time with great additions and careful revisions. Here also he wrote many articles for the literary journal before alluded to. In 1827 he summoned to Coethen his two oldest and most esteemed disciples, Drs. Stapf and Gross, and communicated to them his theory of the origin of chronic diseases and his discovery of a completely new series of medicaments for their cure, exhorting them to test the reality of his opinions and discoveries in their own practice. The next year the first and seconds volumes of celebrated work on Chromic Diseases, their peculiar nature and homeopathic treatment, appeared. The doctrines peculiar therein inoculated were not received with implicit faith by all his disciples, for whilst some professed to perceive in them a discovery equal if not superior to that of the homeopathic therapeutic law, others were not satisfied that the deductions arrived at were justified by the facts on which they were professedly based. To Hahnemann’s opponents his doctrine diseases was a fertile and inexhaustible theme for ridicule and obloquey which he as usual paid no attention to, thought his followers had become too numerous that they began to take up the cudgels in their master’s defense, and the medical press of Germany groaned with polemical articles respecting homeopathic from both sides, of more or less ability. Since the year 1822 the homeopathic had a quarterly journal, that contained many able and vigorous articles in support of Hahnemann’s doctrines. A third , a forth , and a fifth volume of the Chronic Diseases, containing extensive and valuable provings of new medicines, successively appeared during the following two years. The volume of these works can scarcely be over-estimated. And they, with the Materia Medica, constitute the inexhaustible treasury on which the homeopathic practitioner draws for the cure and relief of many diseases in which the allopathic appliances are important or hurtful. |
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