Introduction: A Brief Overview of Hahnemann's Life
by Luc De SchepperSamuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, was a Renaissance genius who was skilled in many fields: he was a master pharmacist, a skilled linguist and translater who was fluent in seven languages, and the forerunner of today's natural healers who promote a natural diet and healthy lifestyle. He could also be called the first psychiatrist, because he was the first person in modern times to promote the humane treatment of the mentally ill as well as curing them with his remedies. Decades before Koch and Pasteur, he understood the principles of contagious illnesses and successfully treated the deadly epidemics which ravaged Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. Hahnemann could even be considered a pioneer of modern public health and sanitation measures.
Hahnemann would merit a prominent place in the history of medicine for any of his contributions. His greatest contribution, of course, is the founding of the system of homeopathy, an unparalleled achievement: so far as we know, Hahnemann is the only person to have envisioned an entire system of medicine and then fully developed it into a powerful and practical tool within the span of a single lifetime. He was a true visionary whose understanding of the energetic basis of health and healing anticipated by a century the paradigm of matter as energy in modern physics. And allopathic medicine has barely begun to incorporate an understanding of the mind-body connection which Hahnemann delineated nearly two centuries ago.
I would like to begin this exposition of Hahnemann's system with a brief overview of his life, and I would encourage interested readers to explore the topic further. Rima Handley's A Homeopathic Love Story provides an enjoyable introduction, with her In Search of the Later Hahnemann helpful for understanding how Hahnemann practiced at the culmination of his career. Of the several biographies of Hahnemann available, my favorites are Haehl's Life and Works of Hahnemann and Bradford's Life and Letters of Hahnemann. These worthwhile books will provide a deep insight into Hahnemann's struggles and the obstacles he had to overcome.
With very little money, Hahnemann left for Leipzig in the spring of 1775 to study medicine. He supported himself by giving private lessons in French and German as well as translating treatises on medicine, botany, and chemistry, a work he would continue for the next 20 years. One of his professors, Dr. Bergrath, was so impressed with the young student that he obtained for Hahnemann the privilege of attending lectures for free. Not satisfied with the dull book-knowledge that this university had to offer (they had no hospital of their own), he soon moved to Vienna. Again, he found good fortune in Dr. Quarin, who helped Hahnemann through his years of a meager existence.
Hahnemann published many works on chemistry, the most celebrated being a treatise on arsenic poisoning. Some of his critics would later say that Hahnemann would have been a great chemist had he not turned into a great quack. In 1789 the family moved to Leipzig and Hahnemann published a treatise on syphilis, remarkable for its description of a new preparation of mercury which he had developed and which is known to this day as Hahnemaniann soluble mercury. Hahnemann's writing and chemistry provided only a meager income for his family, however, and they often lacked the bare necessities for survival. In one touching vignette, Hahnemann recounts scrubbing the family's laundry with raw potatoes because they could not afford soap.
It was also around this time that Hahnemann made his mark as a psychiatrist. Asylums at this time were usually run in connection with prisons; the mentally ill were crowded in close quarters with insufficient food. Worse, they were abandoned by physicians, who believed that insanity was contagious. Instead, the mentally ill were chained, flogged, and teased for the amusement of visitors. The first real asylum for mental patients was opened by Hahnemann in Georgenthal, where Duke Ernst of Gotha put one of the wings of his castle at Hahnemann's disposal. It was designed for the wealthy insane and melancholic. He had only one patient, the well-known author Klockenbring of Hannover, who was suffering from a full-blown mania which modern psychiatrists would have great difficulty treating. Yet Hahnemann cured him completely in seven months. In order to get a sense of this magnificent cure, I urge the reader to read this case in Dudgeon's Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann, page 243. It was the first time in the modern era that insane people were treated with gentleness, humaneness and compassion instead of coercion.
After this, mainly out of financial need he moved again from one village to another, violently attacked by doctors and pharmacists. His practice of making his own medicines aroused their jealousy, and the pharmacists brought action against him for interfering with their privileges. Unfortunately his enemies won and Hahnemann was prohibited from dispensing his own medicines. It was during one of those moves in 1794 that he lost a newborn son in a carriage accident in which his son Friedrich (the only one of the family who would become a homeopathic physician) was also injured.
In 1800 a scarlet fever epidemic gave Hahnemann the opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new type of medicine he was researching, based not only on the Law of Similars but also on the concept of highly diluted, potentized doses. Hahnemann created a sensation when he successfully used Belladonna in homeopathic doses as a cure and preventive for the epidemic. Hahnemann was attacked again because he asked a small remuneration for his discovery (which was understandable, considering his poverty-stricken circumstances), although he made his Belladonna available free of charge to poor patients.
Success was achieved again in 1813 when Hahnemann used homeopathy to treat an epidemic of typhus, which affected Napoleon's soldiers after their invasion of Russia. Soon the epidemic spread to Germany, where Hahnemann cured the first stage with Bryonia and Rhus tox. Again he was attacked by the pharmacists for encroaching on their privileges by dispensing his own medicines The Leipzig city council ordered Hahnemann to cease such activity in 1820. This persecution reached its climax in 1821, forcing Hahnemann to move to Köthen. There he was protected by Duke Ferdinand of Anhalt-Köthen, who was one of his patients and who allowed him to practice as a doctor and dispense his own medications. (Germany at that time was a loose association of duchies and city-states, each with its own laws.)
During this time Hahnemann developed the next stage of his understanding of chronic diseases, the concept of miasms. He published his discovery in 1828 in the first edition of Chronic Diseases. Although the concept was well received by Hahnemann's staunchest supporters (Stapf, Gross, Hering, and von Boenninghausen), most homeopaths felt it was too far-fetched and disavowed it. A Dr. Trinks had schemed behind Hahnemann's back with Hahnemann's publisher to delay its publication, another of the many obstacles Hahnemann faced in developing and publicizing his new system.
Hahnemann was joined in Köthen by his next energetic assistant, Dr. Gottfried Lehman, who turned out to be the most faithful of Hahnemann's helpers. But he was dissatisfied with the "pseudo-homeopaths" of nearby Leipzig, and he distanced himself from them more and more. In 1833 the first homeopathic hospital was opened in Leipzig under the direction of Dr. Moritz Müller; its founders hoped it would benefit from its proximity to the internationally-famous Hahnemann. At first Hahnemann was very enthusiastic, providing financial support and traveling to inspect it in 1834. But the clinic ran into financial problems after Hahnemann left for Paris in 1835 and closed for good in 1842.
Mélanie's role in Hahnemann's life is controversial. After eight decades of struggles, poverty, and adversity, he was able to enjoy the evening of his life with his young, beautiful, well-to-do and well-connected wife, who brought many members of the French nobility and high society to see him. On the other hand, Mélanie successfully isolated him from his children for the rest of his life. Mélanie convinced Hahnemann to come back to Paris with her, holding out the promise of his enjoying rest and the adulation of French society, many of whose members had adopted homeopathy. But after a long and strenuous trip to Paris, she convinced Hahnemann to practice again. The practice was probaby tiring for the elderly Hahnemann, but we can be grateful to Mélanie because it gave him the opportunity to experiment and perfect his LM method. Mélanie learned homeopathy from her husband and worked as his assistant in the afternoon, running her own clinic for poor people in the morning. She even printed her business cards as Dr. Mélanie Hahnemann, the first female "physician" in France.
To conclude this little prologue about Hahnemann, it is fitting to mention Hahnemann's great qualities of character which we homeopaths, his intellectual heirs, could all aspire to. First, Hahnemann had tremendous perseverance in pursuing what he believed to be true. At every step in developing his system he met with great discouragement and abuse. Hahnemann suffered from the attacks of the orthodox medical establishment of his time, which used all the legal and political weapons at their disposal to stop him. The journals of his time printed scathing, even libelous, critiques. The criticisms he endured only stimulated him to perfect his system. But many letters found after his death revealed how much Hahnemann suffered from this undeserved and unceasing persecution.
Hahnemann had an unfortunate limitation which in some ways hindered the development of homeopathy, and which we modern homeopaths would do well to learn from. At a later stage in his life he became intolerant of contradiction, viewing with suspicion anyone who did not agree with him in every detail. He said: "He who does not walk exactly on the same line with me, who diverges, if it be but the breadth of a straw to the left or right, is a traitor and I will have nothing to do with him." Dr. Gross, one of Hahnemann's first and best disciples, wrote to Hahnemann that the loss of his child had taught him that homeopathy did not suffice in every case. Hahnemann never forgive him for this remark. Hahnemann alienated many of his followers with his rigidity and intolerance, although it is also true that he felt betrayed by many of them.
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