The Life and Letters of Dr Samuel Hahnemann By Thomas Lindsley Bradford, M.D. Presented by Dr Robert Séror

The Life and Letters
of Dr Samuel Hahnemann
By Thomas Lindsley Bradford,
M.D.
Presented by Dr Robert Séror

Chapter 79.

Personality
Lessons from his life
Birthplace
Personal traits
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 when

Frederick,
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 the

Reign
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 the

Boston
tea party and the declaration on the State
House steps of Philadelphia
; of the day of Washington
and Lafayette.

He saw

Napoleon
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 of

Waterloo
– 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.

Personality

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 Paul

Richter,
“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 at

Leipzig
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 his

German
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 of

God
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.

Birthplace

The house in

Meissen
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 the

Eckhouse,
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 when

Hahnemann
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 a

Philadelphia
street lamp, is suspended from the angle of the house front.

The house front looks upon the

Hahnemann
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 of

Hahnemann,
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 room

Hahnemann
was born.

Personal traits

Hahnemann

was 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
to

Stapf,
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.)

Hull

says :

” 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 of

Hahnemann’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.”
)

Dudgeon

writes (Biography
of Hahnemann) :

“We may form some idea of

Hahnemann’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 (a

God
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 by

God,
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 by

Hahnemann
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 overthrows

many
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.)

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