The Life and Letters of Dr Samuel Hahnemann
By Thomas Lindsley Bradford, M.D.
Presented by Dr Robert Séror
Lessons from his life
Examination of a student
Such was the life of a great benefactor to mankind. Born in the middle of a century whose influence shaped our own ; a century prodigal in great men ; in the year whenFrederick, destined to be called The Great, was masquerading among the art galleries of Holland ; wandering in boyhood on the fair hills of Meissen when all Europe was engaged in the Seven Years' War and Saxony was crushed by iron heels ; going forth the young scholar to Academic Leipsic just when that unfortunate monarch, Louis XVI, was ascending the guillotine-shadowed throne of France ; when George the Third was king and America was only a colony of England ; when Rousseau was yet writing of the Rights of Man ; when cynical Voltaire was mentor to Prussian Frederick.
A man in his prime, he was patiently searching for nature's law of cure when the world was appalled by theReign of Terror ; when the little sous-lieutenant of artillery, Bonaparte, saw with indignant eyes the sans culottes of Paris, drunk with blood, besiege the dissolute court of Marie Antoinette ; when noble Mirabeau yet lived ; when Marat and Robespierre led in France the Devil's Dance of Death.
He was of the time of theBoston tea party and the declaration on the State House steps of Philadelphia ; of the day of Washington and Lafayette.
He sawNapoleon build an empire on the ashes of a revolution ; saw him march across the lands of Germany ; saw Austerlitz ; saw the dismal retreat from Moscow, and acted there as good physician to the sick and suffering army of 1813.
He listened to the echoes ofWaterloo - the story of St. Helena. He left Germany for brilliant Paris when Bismarck was a student of twenty ; he, the recluse, the scholar, the thinker, became in his old age the fashionable physician in the gayest city in the world.
He lived through the changes of a world's century ; saw his system of healing rise from contempt to honor ; knew hardship ; died in luxury in the world's capital.
Scholar whom scholars honored and respected. Physician whom physicians feared. Philologist - with whom philologists dreaded to dispute. Chemist who taught chemists. Philosopher whom adversity nor honor had power to change.
Hahnemann, one of the figures standing out boldly from the canvas of that great century on which are painted the exploits of many remarkable men.
Jean PaulRichter, "the only one," who was in Leipsic at the same time that Hahnemann was, and most probably knew him personally, thus speaks of him : (Rutheford Russel’s "History and Heroes of Medicine, page 418.")
"Hahnemann, this extraordinary, double brain (Doppelkopf) of philosophy and erudition, whose system must eventually lead to the ruin of the common recipe-crammed brains, but which as yet has been little accepted by practitioners, and is more detested than examined."
- Lessons from his life
That this man was a scholar, a thinker, was of indomitable will, was respected, is not to be denied. He was a careful man, painstaking, methodical. In his experiments, exhaustive. That be in a great measure changed in character during the last years of his life is true. From being very liberal he became opinionated, unyielding. From the time of his persecution atLeipzig be seems to have put aside all liberality and to have become miserly -in disposition and unyielding in character.
That he was hardly liberal enough for hisGerman colleagues. his history well shows. That he injured the spread of Homoeopathy in Germany by his treatment of his disciples regarding the Leipsic hospital is certain.
And yet to the end of his life in his home relations he was always the same good, tender, kindly philosopher and husband and father as before the calumny of the outer world had embittered him. But had he not ample excuse for his firmness and reluctance to relent from his one and unwavering platform of conduct ?
His poverty influenced his life. His lessons in thinking were never forgotten ; the lamp of clay taught its lesson. Poor, obliged to translate through the long night hours, he in that translation, and the study necessary, laid the foundations for the marvellous knowledge that he afterwards exhibited. And through it all may be seen that unwavering faith in the goodness ofGod who must have endowed mankind with some sure method of healing. Hahnemann believed that his discovery was a gift to him from God in trust for the benefit of his fellow-man.
The house inMeissen in which Hahnemann was born is still standing (1893).
It is situated at the corner of the Hahnemann Place and the Newmarket.(Hundertjahrigen Geburtstage Samuel Hahnemann's, Dessau, 1855, 25.)
It was formerly known as theEckhouse, at the upper end of the Meatway and close by the Newmarket, No. 459 of the new Brandkataster.
With the exception of a few needful repairs, it is today as whenHahnemann was born.
It is a plain, old fashioned building of three stories with a steep apexed roof, and towers high above the surrounding buildings. (Villers' International Homoeopathic Annual, Leipzig, 1891.)
A lamp, looking like aPhiladelphia street lamp, is suspended from the angle of the house front.
The house front looks upon theHahnemann Place, and near the corner are two large windows with wooden shutters, and between them a double door.
Over the front window, between the first and second story, a sign is fixed against the wall, bearing in large letters the legend,Restaurant Hahnemann " .
Beside this sign, and directly over the door, a niche in the wall holds a bust ofHahnemann, while on the other side of the bust is an iron tablet, set in the wall, bearing the following inscription :
"Chr. Fr. Samuel Hahnemann, the Founder of Homoeopathy, was born here the 11th of April, 1755."
Further down this side of the old house is still another door, and over this there is a sign reading :
"Schmiedewerkstatt, A. Schone."
Beyond this are two shuttered windows of a room on the ground floor, and within that roomHahnemann was born.
Hahnemannwas an abstemious man.
His only habit of self indulgence was his pipe.
The Rev. Mr.Everest once asked him why he smoked and he replied : (Hom. in 1851," London, p. 306.)
" Oh, it's an idle habit contracted when I had to sit up every other night in order to get bread for my children, while I was pursuing my own investigations by day."
This habit continued until the end of his life.
He possessed only simple ways, disliking all ostentation. In a letter toStapf, dated December 17, 1816, he says : (Brit. Jour. of Hom., Vol. 3., p. 141)
" No more enconiums of me ; I altogether dislike them, for I feel myself to be nothing more than an upright man who merely does his duty. Let us express our regard for one another only in simple words and conduct indicating mutual respect."
"Hahnemann's handwriting was small and neat but firm, and be preferred to write on small-sized paper, as appears from his letters and notes.
He took pains to write every letter distinctly and he wrote a beautiful hand. He was very particular in his forms of expression, and often we find in one line two or three corrections. Up to his latest years he read and wrote without spectacles." (Ameke's " History of Homoeopathy," p. 164.)
" The Register of his Consultations, every day increasing in magnitude, forms at this moment a stupendous medical encyclopedia.
"We have seen upon one of the shelves ofHahnemann's library thirty-six quarto volumes of at least five hundred pages each, entirely written by his own hand ; and to those who are curious as to the penmanship of the venerable octogenarian, who has never used spectacles, we can testify to writing as fine and beautiful as the mignonne of Didot. (Hom. Examiner, Vol. 2., p. 8. Hull's " Life of Hahnemann." )
Dudgeonwrites (Biography of Hahnemann) :
"We may form some idea ofHahnemann's immense industry when we consider that he proved about ninety different medicines, that be wrote upwards of seventy original works on chemistry and medicine, some of which were in several thick volumes, and translated about twenty-four works from the English, French, Italian and Latin, on chemistry, medicine, agriculture and general literature, many of which were in more than one volume."
He ever had an exalted opinion of the dignity of the medical profession. In alluding to his discovery of the prophylactic for scarlet fever, he said :
"The furtherance of every means, be it ever so small, that can save human life, that can bring health and security (aGod of love invented this blessed and most wondrous of arts !) should be a sacred object to the true physician chance or the labor of the physician has discovered this one."
Again, in writing of the duties of the nurse and the physician in the time of pestilence :(Dudgeon's " Hahnemann," 1852.)
"They are two persons ordained byGod, and placed, like Uriah in the battle in the thickest of the fight - forlorn hopes, quite close to the advancing enemy, without any hours of relief from their irksome guard - two very much misunderstood beings, who sacrifice themselves at hardearned wages for the public weal, and, in order to obtain a civic crown, brave the life-destroying, poisoned atmosphere, deafened by the cries of agony and the groans of death."
The following is a letter written byHahnemann which gives his idea of what should constitute an examination in Homoeopathy :
Examination of a student
"Dear Mr. Steinestel:
I have much pleasure in making your acquaintance, and agreeably to your duke I put to you some questions, from your answers to which I shall be able to judge of your capability to practice Homoeopathically and to cure patients of all sorts.
"I.What course does the true physician pursue in order to obtain a knowledge of what is morbid, consequently what be has to cure in the patient ?
" 2. Why does a name of a disease not suffice to instruct the physician as to what he has to do in order to cure the patient ? For example, why should he not at once give Cinchona bark, when the patient says he has got fever (as the Allopath does) ?
" 3.How does the true physician learn what each medicine is useful for, and consequently in what morbid states it can be serviceable and curative ?
"4.Why does the true physician view with horror the prescribing of several medicinal substances mingled together in one prescription for a disease ?
" 5. Why does it shock the true physician to see blood drawn from any patient, whether by venesection or blood-sucking leeches, (Blutsangende Egel) or cupping-glasses ?
"6. Why is it an abomination for the true physician to see Opium given by the Allopath for all sorts of pains, for diarrhoea, or for sleeplessness ?
"7.Why does the Homoeopathist prepare gold, plumbago, lycopodium-pollen, culinary salt, etc., by triturating them for hours with a non-medical substance, such as sugar of milk, and by shaking a small dissolved portion of them with water and alcohol, which is termed dynamising ?
" 8.Why must the true physician not give his patients medicine for a single symptom (for a single morbid sensation) ?
" 9.When the true physician has given the patient a small dose of a medicine selected by reason of similarity of the most characteristic symptoms of the disease, that is to say, capable ,of itself producing similar symptoms in the healthy individual, with good results (as might naturally be expected), when ought lie to administer another dose of medicine ? How does he then perceive what medicine he ought to give ?
10.Why can the Homoeopathic medicines never be dispensed by the apothecary without injury to the public ?
" When you shall have replied to these questions in writing I shall be able to judge if you are a true Homoeopathic practitioner.
" Hail to the king who cherishes only wholesome truth, and who with a vigorous hand overthrowsmany injurious time honored customs : such a one is the vice regent on earth of the -all-bountiful and all-wise Godhead !" (Brit. Jour. of Hom., Vol. x., p. 167.)
Copyright © Robert Séror 2001