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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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Hahnemann survived his migration to Paris eight years and died there full of years and honour, at the age of eighty nine, on the 2nd July, 1843. He was buried in the cemetery of Montmartre, and his body was attended to the grave by only four of his nearest relatives. We might have wished that a man, who had acted such an important part in the world’s history, had a less meager attendance to his last resting place. Such is a brief outline of the life and labours of Hahnemann, whose name, even by the admission of those most wildly opposed to his doctrines, must henceforth form an epoch in the history of medicine, at the founder of a school which has gained more adherents and roused up more assailants, written more books, and exercised a more important influence on the art of medicine, then any school or sect since the days of Galen. The homoeopathic principle, as a law of therapeutics, is an immutable law of nature, and is altogether independent of any individual; but the homoeopathic system, or the doctrines and technicalities that have been agglomerated round that principle, bears the impress of the personality- the individuality of its author. While, then, the principle bears the closest inspection, and gains ever more and more upon our belief and conviction the more searchingly we examine it, the systems may naturally be expected to derive some of its characteristic from the peculiar mental constitution of the man who originated it; and hence it is that we find the homoeopathic school, as it is termed, while they how unhesitatingly to the principle and to the logical deduction that flow from it, disputing with Hahnemann inch the doctrines, tenets, and technicalities which he has accumulated round this principles. To facilitate our inquires as to what parts of the systems promulgated by 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. The most of striking peculiarity of Hahnemann’s mind was indomitable perseverance in following out the line of control he believed to be the true one, notwithstanding every difficulty and discouragement. This we have seen him as boy persisting in devoting himself to study in spite of the opposition of his rather and poring over his books by the light of his contraband oil, in the primitive lamp of his own construction. In later years we find him eking out the means of his support whilst studying medicines, by teaching others his surreptitiously acquired knowledge, and translating books from various languages, with contents of many of which he could have had little or no sympathy. It is related of him that he set up every alternate night, and, in order to enable himself to do so, acquired that inveterate habit of smoking tobacco, which he continued to indulge in to the last. The means he took to chase away his slumbers in his youth thus become in after pears the only luxury in which he indulged. |
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