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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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The years 1805 and 1806 were eventful ones for the development of the doctrine, and whilst he demolished the time honoured faith in the medicine of the 3000 years, in his masterly little work entitled Esculapius in the balance, the temple of his own system, of which he had hitherto been only laying the foundations, commenced to exhibit some those fair proportions which we now admire, by the appearance of the first sketch of a Pure Materia Medica which he gave to the world in Latin, and of that wonderful exposition of his whole doctrine, entitled. The Medicine of Experience, which was published in 1806 in Hufeland’s Journal. And what was the reception this admirable work met with the most original, logical, and brilliant essay that had ever appeared on the art of medicine? A thousand captious objectors arose, who not being able to refute the masterly arguments brought forward by Hahnemann, fell to ridiculing the technicalities of the system; an easy task, since we all know that every new truth appears at first ridiculous. Nor was calumny silent. Hahnemann was loaded with most opprobious epithets because he introduced the custom, them unusual in Germany, of making the patients with whom he corresponded pay him for each epistolary consultation. This the facilities afforded by the arrangements of the German Post office enable him to do, and he was led to adopt it by the circumstance that so many sought his advice from mere curiosity, or worse motives, without any thought or paying, that he was driven to the adoption of what might be an unusual but certainly not a reprehensible plan for securing the bonafides of his patients. A mistake he had made in his former chemical days was raked up from the limbs of forgotten things, and imputed to him as a gross crime, and a proof of his venality and dishonesty; thought, in reality, the whole story redounds to his credit. During the period when he had temporarily abandoned medicine in disgust at its uncertainty, and had devoted himself solely to chemical and literary pursuits, he fancied he had discovered a new alkali, which he denominated pneum, and which he sold to these who wished to possess it. Subsequent investigation showed him that he had committed a mistake, and that the substance he had supposed to be a perfectly new matter was nothing but borax. He hastened to acknowledge his error, and lost on time in refunding to the purchasers the money he had received for it. He was now settled on Torgan, and perceiving that the discoveries and labours met nothing but opposition, contempt, and neglect from his medical brethren, disdaining to reply to any of the odious calumnies that were heaped upon him by those who should have been proud of him us their countryman and colleague, his discontinued writing their medical journals, and appealed to the injustice of his professional brethren to the unprejudiced judgment of an enlightened public, and hence forth published his strictures on ancient medicine, and his projects for entitled the Allgemeiner Anzeiner der Deutschen. During the years 1806 and 1809, he published in that journals a succession of papers equal terseness, vigor and originality to anything he had previously written, which two deserve especial mention, viz, his essay on the value of the Speculative System of Medicine, and toughing and earnest letter to Hufeland, whom he never ceased to love and esteem, thought in every respect he was a much greater man and finer character than the Nestor of German medicines, as Hufeland was called. The doctrines which were scornfully rejected by the Scribes and Pharisees of the old school found favor with public, and the number of his admirers and non-medical disciples increased from day to day. In 1810 he published the first edition of his immortal Organon, which was an amplification and extension of his Medicine of Experience, worked up with greater care, and put into a more methodical and aphoristic form, after the model of some of the Hippocratic writings. With a wide-spread reputation he now re-entered Leipzic, where a crowd of patients admirers flocked around him, and the flood-tide of fortune seemed at length to set in towards him. Professor Becker of Berlin wrote, in 1810, a violent distribe against the Organon, which displays more worth and untempered hostility than wit or good breeding, and was replied to in a vigorous manner by young Frederick Hahnemann, who undertook the defense of his father, for the latter treated all attacks, whether on his character or his works with silent contempt; thought it could not be said he viewed them with indifference, for there is every reason to believe the poisoned shafts of envy and calumny rankled in his soul and communicated acerbity to a disposition that was naturally overflowing with love to his fellow-men. Hecker’s attack was the signal for numerous others of the same nature. Written with greater or less ability and with more or less fairness; but it would be wearisome to recapitulate even the titles of the articles and pamphlets that issued from the press intended by their authors to crush the presumptuous innovator. However, this was not the effect they had. Hahnemann steadily pursued his course without condescending to notice the attacks of his adversaries, and in 1811 he published the first volume of the Pure Materia Medica, which contained the pathogeneses of the medicines he had been silently testing upon himself and friends, together with the symptoms he had culled from various records of poisoning by the same substances. His earnest with this time purpose of indoctrinating the rising generation of physicians in homeopathy, theoretically and practically; but this plan failing, he resolved to give a course of lectures upon the system to those medical men and students who wished to be instructed in it. Order to be allowed to do this, however, he had to pay a certain sum of money and defend a thesis before the faculty of Medicine. To this regulation we are indebted for that ably essay, De Helleborismo veterum, which no one can read without confessing that Hahnemann treats the subject in a masterly way and displays an amount of acquaintance with the writings of the Greek, Latin, Arabian and other, physicians, from Hippocrates down his own time, that is possessed by few, and a power of philological criticism that has been rarely equaled. This thesis he defended on the 26th of June, 1812, and it drew from his adversaries an unwilling acknowledgement of his learning and genius, and from the impartial and worth Dean of the Faculty a strong expression of admiration. When a candidate defends his thesis, he was what are called opponents among the examiners, who dispute the various opinions preached in the thesis; but the most of Hahnemann’s opponents were schooled such an amiable state of mind by this display of learning, that they hastened to confess they were entirely of his way of thinking, while a few, who wished to say something for form’s sake, merely expressed their dissent from some of Hahnemann’s philological views. This trial, which his enemies had fain hoped would end in an exposure of the ignorance of the shallow Chariton, triumphantly proved the superiority of Hahnemann over his opponents, even on their own territory, and was a brilliant inauguration of the lectures which he forthwith commenced to deliver to a circle of admiring students and Grey headed old doctor, whom the fame of his doctrines and his learning attracted round him. He lectured twice a week, and from among the followers who gathered round him he selected a number to assist him in the labours of proving medicines, which he pursued without intermission. The vast amount of self-sacrifice, devotion, and endurance these labours must have required from him, those only who have attempted to prove medicines can from an idea of. |
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