Samuel Hahnemann

“ He had previously felt dissatisfied with the state of the science of medicine, and this observation led him to assert the truth of the “law of similars,” similia similibus curantur or curentur—i.e. diseases are cured (or should be treated) by those drugs which produce symptoms similar to them in the healthy. ”

“ He was educated at the “elector’s school” of Meissen, and studied medicine at Leipzig and Vienna, taking the degree of M.D. at Erlangen in 1779. After practising in various places, he settled in Dresden in 1784, and thence removed to Leipzig in 1789. In the following year, while translating W. Cullen’s Materia medica into German, he was struck by the fact that the symptoms produced by quinine on the healthy body were similar to those of the disordered states it was used to cure. ”

“ Hahnemann, who was born at Massieu in Saxony, was the founder of it, and, strange to say, medical men, who are notorious for entertaining contrary opinions, have not yet agreed among themselves whether he was a very great quack or a very great philosopher. ”

“ In France, the old man soon found himself surrounded by a set of flatterers, who, like the fox in the fable, commended the singing, in the hope of being benefited by it. Hahnemann was never a genius, or endowed with strong reasoning powers. The axiom upon which he built his Homœopathy did not originate with him, but the proverbs that "like cures like," and that "part strengthens part," were ancient by-words, brought down from the dark ages, and which science had long exploded. ”

“ The infantile years of little Hahnemann were spent amidst scenery so strikingly beautiful, as to impress his young buoyant heart, even in those tender years, with an admiration of Nature's handiwork, and so instill into him a love of the works of God, which ever increased as he grew older. ”

“ Seldom has a man ended his days in so glorious a sunset, or in a surer hope for the future.
The merit of Hahnemann, and that for which we ought to bless his name and cherish his memory, is his rejection of theory and the establishment of the curative art upon the solid foundation of science. All that was merely speculative he rejected as unsafe, and sought by pure experiment and objective observation, to find out Nature's law of cure. ”

“ The public may not require physicians less, but will demand less of them in the way of positive medication. Hahnemann came, not as he and his followers supposed, to lay the foundation of a new and durable system of medicine, nor to prostrate and crush the old, and hurl into oblivion the fruits of all past experience—not to gain anything for himself or his followers—but, unwittingly and unwillingly, to labor through a long life in aid of that very system that he wished to overthrow and demolish. ”

“ Every rational principle in medicine is founded upon, and guided by, the same kind of common sense that is always employed by the farmer and mechanic, and is manifested in every department of domestic life.
Having laid down his principles, Hahnemann set about making experiments upon himself and others in order to find articles which, given to a well man, would induce the disease or symptoms of the disease he wished to cure; because, according to his doctrine, whatever would make a well man sick, would cure one sick and having the same symptoms. ”

“ The early disciples of Hahnemann were not such men as Bichat, Dupuytren, Yelpeau and Ricord; but men of slender attainments, whose standing and qualifications did not entitle them to much eminence in the profession, but whose vanity and ambition could find full scope in Homœopathy—men who chose rather to reign in hell than serve in heaven. ”

“ Does Hahnemann himself represent Homoeopathy as it now exists? He certainly ought to be its best representative, after having created it, and devoted his life to it for half a century. He is spoken of as the great physician of the time, in most, if not all Homoeopathic works. If he is not authority on the subject of his own doctrines, who is? So far as I am aware, not one tangible discovery in the so-called science has ever been ascribed to any other observer ”

“ Blinded by prejudice, they avoid small doses of medicine attenuated to the highest degree, and thus deprive themselves of the great advantages which experience has a thousand times proved to result from them." So it seems that Hahnemann's experience confirmed him more and more in the superior efficacy of high attenuations; and during the last years of his life he became more scrupulously devoted to high potencies. Now let us compare this doctrine of the immortal Hahnemann, as his disciples call him, with the declarations of some conspicuous homœopathic leaders. ”

“ Hahnemann and his early associates, besides aiming to overthrow everything that was true in medicine, sought also to connect Homœopathy with Theology. After twelve years of laborious investigation, Hahnemann informs us that he made the important discovery that the greatest portion of all the ills that flesh is heir to, arises from one single affection, and that also all actual sin and positive delinquencies are produced solely by that same bodily disease, and that disease is nothing more nor less than Psora, or the common Itch. ”

“ The early morning found assembled a large number of the friends of Hahnemann, his disciples; deputations from various cities; also deputations from the Universities of Leipzig, Vienna and Erlangen, which presented him with the Diploma of Honor. The King of Saxony, the Duke of Saxe Gotha and many others had sent costly presents from far and near. His dwelling having been appropriately prepared for the celebration, and on a table, resembling an altar, adorned with flowers and entwined with oak leaves, was placed a well executed bust of Hahnemann. ”

“ Accordingly he spread over the whole habitable globe, two substances, which were constantly required for human sustenance. These are carbonate of lime and common salt. The one seasons our drink, and the other our food. We swallow both in the first act of deglutition, and continue to use them to the last hour of life. The Most High, when he had finished the work of creation, pronounced it all very good. But Hahnemann discovered that this declaration was untrue—he has discovered that these articles, taken in such large quantities, are poisonous, and tend to ruin the system and destroy life. ”

“ The cures, however, both at Dessau and at Coethen, where he had been made a Hofrath by the reigning Duke, were very extraordinary. Hahnemann remained in Coethen till 1835, and in that year, when he was eighty, he married a young French lady, Melanie d’Hervilly, and was carried off by her to Paris, where he soon gained a large practice, and died in 1843, that is at the age of eighty-eight. ”

“ From a theoretical point of view Hahnemann’s is one of the abstract systems, pretending to universality, which modern medicine neither accepts nor finds it worth while to controvert. In the treatment of disease his practical innovations came at a fortunate time, when the excesses of the depletory system had only partially been superseded by the equally injurious opposite extreme of Brown’s stimulant treatment. Hahnemann’s use of mild and often quite inert remedies contrasted favourably with both of these. ”

“ Everything that happens for a number of days or weeks is, as we have seen, set down as an effect of the medicine. Old volumes are then ransacked promiscuously, and every morbid sensation or change that anybody ever said was produced by the drug in question is added to the list of symptoms. By one or both of these methods, each of the sixty-four substances enumerated by Hahnemann is shown to produce a very large number of symptoms, the lowest in his scale being ninety-seven, and the highest fourteen hundred and ninety-one. ”

“ As we have said before, the principles laid down by Hahnemann and imperiously enjoined upon his followers, are not at all regarded by a large portion of the homœopathic practitioners of the present time. If they claim that they have improved upon his system, the claim is false ”

“ Because laxatives sometimes cure diarrhœa, frost-bitten parts are sometimes relieved by being rubbed with snow, and a dose of senna sometimes cures colic, Hahnemann fancied that he saw his theory confirmed. He forget another proverb, viz., "Like produces like in endless succession," and overlooked an established principle of philosophy which declares that (cœteris paribus) whatever increases the cause, increases the effect. ”

“ To get such a science recognized and spread over the world, is undoubtedly a noble problem of the age. Hahnemann also discovered by experiment and pure objective observation, that disease renders the organization wonderfully sensitive to their specific remedies, so that the mere smell of the specific drug can, in many cases effect a cure ”

“ In the picturesque town of Meissen, in the district of Cur Saxony, lived an honest and worthy man, Christian Gottfried Hahnemann, an intelligent, patriotic and highly esteemed, though unassuming and unambitious member of that community, by trade a painter upon porcelain, known under the name of Dresden-China. ”

“ In the British Journal of Homœopathy, published in 1849, Hahnemann is styled the "indefatigable apostle of Homœopathy"; the system is declared to be "not a science merely, but also, for those who comprehend it, a sublime devotion, a form of religion, a rainbow of divine union, holding out to mankind the promise of speedy regeneration." ”

“ Nay, more; unless the disease existed in embryo, he could never have it at all, because he has used the medicine as a prophylactic from his earliest infancy, therefore he cannot possibly have any disease that carbonate of lime in such doses will cure.
There is another consideration connected with this article. Hahnemann directs that only one single, simple medicine shall be given at a time. In his Organon, pages 319 and 320, he says: "In no case is it requisite to administer more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time." ”

“ If the practitioner adheres strictly and honestly to the principles and rules laid down by Hahnemann, and regulates his practice by such authors as Jahr, Possart, Laurie, Hull, Duglas, Teste, and Miss Emma Cote, he will do no positive harm. Everything which he pretends to administer will be so attenuated that neither good nor harm can possibly arise from its use in any case, or in any dose. It can only serve to amuse the patient or his friends, whilst the efforts of nature, if they are sufficient, restore him to health. ”

“ A large majority of the names of old authors he cites are wholly unknown to science. With some of them I have been long acquainted, and I know that their accounts of diseases are no more to be trusted than their contemporary Ambroise Pare's stories of mermen, and similar absurdities. But if my judgment is rejected, as being a prejudiced one, I can refer to Cullen, who mentioned three of Hahnemann's authors in one sentence, as being "not necessarily bad authorities ”

“ He is one of the only two Homoeopathic writers with whom, as I shall mention, the Paris publisher will have anything to do upon his own account. The other is Jahr, whose Manual is little more than a catalogue of symptoms and remedies. If any persons choose to reject Hahnemann as not in the main representing Homoeopathy, if they strike at his authority, if they wink out of sight his deliberate and formally announced results, it is an act of suicidal rashness ”

“ Thus there exist two schools among the adherents of homoeopathy. On the one hand there are the Hahnemannians, the “Purists” or “High Potency” men, who still profess to regard the Organon as their Bible, who believe in all the teachings of Hahnemann, who adhere in their prescriptions to the single dose, the single medicine, and the highest possible potency, and regard the doctrine of the spiritual dynamization acquired by trituration and succussion as indubitable. ”

“ A disease for Hahnemann consists essentially in a group of symptoms. The proper medicine for any disease is the one which is capable of producing a similar group of symptoms when given to a healthy person.
It is of course necessary to know what are the trains of symptoms excited by different substances, when administered to persons in health, if any such can be shown to exist. Hahnemann and his disciples give catalogues of the symptoms which they affirm were produced upon themselves or others by a large number of drugs which they submitted to experiment. ”

“ In a certain measure Hahnemann’s theory of homœopathy was a reaction against the prevalent theories of the day, and has survived through the century, though in a much modified form. Some of his views were as follows:
175 “The only vocation of the physician is to heal; theoretical knowledge is of no use. In a case of sickness he should only know what is curable and the remedies. Of the diseases he cannot know anything except the symptoms. There are internal changes, but it is impossible to learn what they are; symptoms alone are accessible; with their removal by remedies the disease is removed. ”

“ The belief in and employment of the infinitesimal doses is general, and in some places universal, among the advocates of Homoeopathy; but a distinct movement has been made in Germany to get rid of any restriction to the use of these doses, and to employ medicines with the same license as other practitioners.
3. The doctrine of the origin of most chronic diseases in Psora, notwithstanding Hahnemann says it cost him twelve years of study and research to establish the fact and its practical consequences, has met with great neglect and even opposition from very many of his own disciples. ”

“ Homœopathic theories are so absurd, that all sagacious practitioners take special care to keep them as much as possible out of sight. All that they wish the public to know is that their scheme is a new and wonderful discovery made by the immortal Hahnemann; that it is the shortest, easiest, and surest road to health, and that it wholly discards all that pertains to the old and all but defunct system, and they assure us that the success of their mode of treatment is without a parallel. ”