Sketch of Hahnemann’s Career : The Search for a
Principle in Medicine.But
now it is time to tell something about Hahnemann himself, and how he
came to discover this systematic method of studying the powers of drugs
– to discover the principle in medicine which Sir Andrew Clark said does
not even now exist.Samuel Frederick
Christian Hahnemann was born at Meissen, in Saxony, on the 10th of April
in the year 1755. At the age of 20 he commenced his medical studies at
Leipzig, and earned his living by translating into German foreign
scientific works at the same time that he pursued his studies. After two
years at Leipzig he removed to Vienna, to gain practical knowledge in
the great hospitals there. He took his M. D. degree at Erlangen in 1779.Hahnemann was an
excellent linguist, being perfectly familiar with English, Italian,
French, Greek, Latin and Arabic.Whilst yet a student he
translated from English into German, among other works, Nugent’sEssay
on Hydrophobia, Stedman’s Physiological
Essays, and Ball’s Modern
Practise of Physic. From 1779 onwards
he contributed to periodical literature, and in 1784, at the age of 29,
he published his first original work, On
the Treatment of Chronic Ulcers. In
this work he expressed pretty much the same sentiment as that I have
quoted from Sir Andrew Clark as to the want of principle in medicine. He
lamented “the
absence of any principle for discovering the curative powers of
medicines.” He could not deny that
drugs has curative powers, but what he wanted was some principle to
guide him in discovering and defining what those powers were, and the
indications for their use. Hahnemann was a master of practical
chemistry, and wrote much on chemical subjects. His book on Arsenical
Poisoning, published in 1786, was
quoted as an authority by Christison in his work on Poisons.
In 1787 Hahnemann discovered the best test for arsenic and other poisons
in wine by means of acidulated sulphuretted hydrogen water, having
pointed out the unreliable nature of the “Wurtemberg Test,”
which had been in use up to that date. In 1788 he announced his
discovery of a new preparation of Mercury, known to this day as
“Hahnemann’s soluble Mercury,” and still retained under that
name in the German Pharmacopśia. His intimate acquaintance with drugs
and their modes of preparation enabled him to write his Apothekerlexicon,
or Pharmaceutical Dictionary, which appeared in several volumes from
1793 to 1799, and was for many years the standard work on that subject.It is not by any means
exclusively as the discoverer of the homśopathic system that Hahnemann
is distinguished. He was a pioneer in many other medical reforms.
For
example, it was he who was the first to adopt the non-restraint system
of treating lunatics. I will quote from Dr. Dudgeon an account of an
historic instance of this :-“In 1792 Hahnemann
undertook the medical care of the celebrated Hanoverian statesman
Klockenbring, who had already been treated in the usual barbarous manner
of the period in an asylum of the ordinary stamp, with no benefit, but
the contrary. Hahnemann treated this dangerous lunatic on a
non-restraint plan, with out the use of chains or corporal punishment,
which were in universal use at that period. His treatment was perfectly
successful, and Klockenbring was restored to his family and friend
perfectly cured. Hahnemann says in an account he gives of this
case : – ‘I never allow an insane person to be punished either by
blows or by any other kind of corporal chastisement, because there is no
punishment where there is no responsibility, and because these sufferers
deserve only pity, and are always rendered worse by such rough
treatment, and never improved.’ “
After
his cure, says Ameke, Klockenbring showed his deliver, “often with
tears in his eyes, the marks of the blows and stripes his former keeper
had employed to keep him in order.”But we will now go back
again a little. After 1788 Hahnemann seems to have given practice in
disgust. In a letter to Hufeland, the Nestor of medicine of his day (to
whose journal –Hufeland’s
Journal – Hahnemann was a constant
contributor), he says his withdrawal was chiefly occasioned by his
disgust at the uncertainties of medical practise, owing
to the want of any principle for the administration of drugs in disease.
During this time he occupied himself with chemical researches and the
translation of work in chemistry, agriculture, and medicine, from the
English, French, and Italian.It was whilst engaged
in translating Cullen’sMateria
Medica in 1790 that he made the
classical observation which has proved to be to the science of drug
study what the falling apple observed by the boy Newton has been to
physical science. As his mind was always occupied with the search for
some guiding principle for the selection of medicines in disease, he was
struck with the unsatisfactory nature of Cullen’s explanation of the
action Cinchona bark in the cure of ague. That it did cure many case of
ague Hahnemann could not deny ; and it occurred to him that if he
took some of the drug when quite well he might obtain some clue to an
explanation of its curative action. He took it in considerable
quantities, and produced in himself all the symptoms of an ordinary
attack of intermittent fever. The account of the experiment will be
found in a footnote to page 108 of vol. II. Of his translation of
Cullen’s Materia Medica.
Here Hahnemann was in possession of two related facts : Cinchona
bark cured ague, and it also caused, in a sensitive, healthy person,
symptoms indistinguishable from an attack ague.An observation of this
kind was not likely to remain unfruitful in a fertile brain like
Hahnemann’s. In the following year 1791, he translated Monro’sMateria
Medica, and in a note he again refers
to his experiments with Cinchona. Five years later, in 1796, being then
41 years of age, he published in Hufeland’s
Journal his essay on a New
Principle for Discovering the Curative powers of drugs.
In this he discusses the several ways in which drugs had formerly been
studied and used, and then describes the “similar” method, the
rule “likes by likes” (similia similibus) being first
formulated in this essay thus :-“Every powerful
medicinal substance produces in the human body a peculiar kind of
disease – the more powerful the medicine the more peculiar, marked and
violent the disease. We should imitate Nature, which sometimes cures a
chronic disease by superseding another, and employ in the disease we
wish to cure that medicine which is able to produce another very similar
artificial disease, and the former will be cured, –similia
similibus.”
In
this essay he referred to his early note on Cullen, and said after
mature experience he could say that not onlyprobably,
but quite certainly,
bark cured ague because it had the power to produce fever. He quotes
examples of well known drug actions to support his proposition, and
sketched in a masterly way the characteristic features of a number
drugs.In 1805 – Hahnemann
being now 50 years old – appeared two works of great importance :
first hisĆsculapius in
the balance, which takes a general
survey of traditional medicine and pronounces on it the verdict
“weighed in the balances and found wanting” – a verdict which
has since received very amble endorsement. Second, in two vols. In
Latin, his Fragmenta de
viribus medicamentorum positivis sive in sano corporate observatis
(Fragments on the Positive Powers of Drugs, – that is to say, their
effects observed in the healthy body). This contained the first effort
towards the reconstruction of the Materia
Medica on a relational basis of pure
experiment on the human body.In 1806 appeared his
Medicine
of Experience, in which is contained
the first complete exposition of the homśopathic method now thoroughly
thought out by him after sixteen years of unremitting work –
observation, experiment, and research. This was published in Hufeland’s
journal – that is to say, in the
leading professional journal of his time. The same year Hahnemann
published the last work he translated – Haller’s Materia
Medica, Haller being one of Hahnemann’s
forerunners in recommending the testing of drugs on the healthy body ;
but Haller did nothing towards carrying his recommendation into effect.In 1807 Hahnemann first
used the word “homśopathic” in thetitle
of a work – an article also contributed to Hufeland’s
Journal – on “Indications of the
homśopathic Employment of Medicines in Ordinary Practice.”The year 1810 may be
said to be the birth year of homśopathy, for in that year appeared the
first edition of theOrganon,
which is an expansion of the Medicine
of Experience, and a complete statement
of the Homśopathic method. The publication of Hahnemann’s Organon
marks an epoch in the history of therapeutics. It constitutes a
complete, practical, and philosophical statement of the art of cure. It
sets out clearly with the statement that the business of the physician
is not to ‘treat” but – to cure.
“The physician’s high and only
mission is to heal the sick- to cure, as it is termed “- this is
the first aphorism of the Organon.
Four other editions of the work followed the first ; the fifth
edition appearing in 1833. The year following the first appearance of
the Organon
-1811, that is,-saw the first part of the Materia
Medicas Pura, the third edition of
which appeared in 1830.During these years of
independent thought and action, as may easily be imagined, Hahnemann had
no very easy time of it with his medical brethren, whose ideas he was
upsetting, or with the apothecaries, whose trade he bade fair to
undermine. The latter were paid according to the number of quantities of
the drugs in the prescriptions they dispensed, and Hahnemann insisted on
giving only one drug at a time, and not too much of that. Consequently
he was driven from one place to another, until in 1812, he gave up all
hope of influencing the older man in the profession, and determined to
proceed to Leipzig and there devote himself to teaching the pupils of
the medical department of the University. Certain conditions had to be
fulfilled before he could obtain permission to do this : he had to
write a thesis, and defend it before the Faculty of the University, and
pay a fee of fifty thalers. In compliance, he wrote and read his thesis
entitled “The
Helleborism of the Ancients“, and
so amazed his auditors with his mastery of his subject his mastery of
his subject and the immense learning and research his essay displayed,
that the Faculty congratulated him publicly and granted him his license
to teach forth with. Any one who wishes to read the treatise (which is
exceedingly interesting still) will find it translated in Dr. Dudgeon’s
collection of Hahnemann’s Lesser
Writings. At Leipzig he continued
lecturing twice a week, giving two courses of lectures a year until
1821. During his time he gathered about him an enthusiastic band of
disciples, who helped him in providing medicines, and whose names are
now immortalised in the Homśopathic Materia
Medica by the experiments they made on
themselves with different drugs. In 1819 persecution was commenced by
the apothecaries, who took action against him for preparing his own
medicines (which they were incompetent to prepare). The persecution was
at last successful, and Hahnemann was driven from Leipzig in 1821 to
find an asylum with a former patient, Duke Frederick Ferdinand of
Anhalt, who made him his private physician, with liberty to engage in
general practice at his capital town of Coethen.By this time
Hahnemann’s fame as a practitioner had spread far and wide. The result
was that invalids flocked to the little town of Coethen in search of his
aid. The majority of these were affected with ailments of long standing,
and thus it came about that Hahnemann had abundant opportunity of
observing the symptoms and course of chronic diseases, and in amplifying
and perfecting the homśopathic means of curing them. In Coethen there
was comparatively little in the way of acute illness to distract him
from this special line of work. It was during this period that
Hahnemann’s first work onChronic
Diseases was written and the first
edition was published. In 1828 the first three volumes appeared, nine
years after his arrival Coethen. The fourth volume was published 1830,
and the fifth not till after the Coethen period, when Hahnemann had
removed to Paris.But it was not in
Coethen that the true nature of chronic diseases had become plain to
Hahnemann. Three years before he was driven from Leipzig the problem had
presented itself to him ; and the same over mastering consciousness
of the existence of Natural Law impelled him to solve this difficulty as
he had already solved the problem of the homśopathic relationship of
drugs and diseases.In the “Essay on
the Nature of Chronic Diseases,” which forms the introductory part
of his work onThe
Chronic Diseases, Hahnemann tells the
story of its inception. “Ever since the years 1816 and 1817,”
he writes, “I had been employed, day and night, to discover the
reason why the homśopathic remedies which we then knew, did not effect
a cure of the above-named chronic diseases. I tried to obtain a more
correct, and, if possible, a completely correct idea of the true nature
of those thousands of chronic ailments which remained uncured in spite
of the incontrovertible truth of the homśopathic doctrine, when, behold !
the Giver of all good permitted me, about that time, to solve the
sublime problem for the benefit of mankind, after unceasing meditation,
indefatigable research, careful observations, and the most accurate
experiments.”In a later chapter I
deal somewhat fully with Hahnemann’s doctrine of the nature of the
chronic diseases ; but I wish to point out here that in Coethen he
found ample opportunities for practically testing his observations, for
the proving of new remedies, and for perfecting the homśopathic
armamentarium.On March 31,1830,
Hahnemann had the misfortune to lose his first wife, he being then near
the completion of his seventy-fifth year. She had been the stay and
companion of his stormy life, and had borne him eleven children, two
sons and nine daughters.
Nearly
five years after this event there came to Coethen among the number of
those who sought the aid of the modern Ćsculapius, the brilliant and
talented Melanie d’Hervilly Gohier, As all the world knows, the
acquaintance ended in the second marriage of Hahnemann, he then being in
his eightieth year, and his bride being thirty five. But it was anything
but an ill-assorted match, for all that. The second Madame Hahnemann
perceived that her husband might fill a much large sphere of usefulness
if he left Coethen and made his home in Paris. Thither she induced him
to travel, and through her influence with the Government of the time she
obtained for Hahnemann to a licence practise in the French capital. A
student of science, an artist, and something of an anatomist as well,
under her husband’s tuition she rapidly developed no little skill in the
practice of medicine and homśopathy. She became practically his
assistant, as it was impossible for Hahnemann to attend to all who came
to see him. Madame Hahnemann acted as his protector, and would not allow
more to have access to him than he could attend to. For eight years the
Hahnemann’s led in Paris a life of great activity and unclouded
happiness, the centre of a brilliant circle. Hahnemann’s presence in
Paris gave a great impetus to the study and practice of homśopathy, and
the influence of his work in that city remains to this day. On Sunday,
July 2,1843, he breathed his last. He was buried in the cemetery of
Montmartre.The year 1900 was
marked by two events of great importance in connection with Hahnemann.
After prolonged negotiations with the executors of the late Madame
Hahnemann, permission was obtained to remove Hahnemann’s body from its
obscure position in Montmartre to a site purchased in the cemetery of
Pčre Lachaise. There a monument of Scotch granite from Peterhead,
raised by his admires from all parts of the world, and surmounted by his
bust in bronze, was unveiled on July 21,1900, in the presence of the
members of the International Homśopathic Congress then in session in
Paris.
The other event was the
unveiling of the Hahnemann monument in Washington, erected at a cost of
Ł70,000 by Hahnemann’s followers in the United States of America. This
monument, which is one of the finest pieces of sculptural art in the
States, has a commanding position in the famous Scott Circle at
Washington, and was unveiled June 21,1900, by President McKinley.Whilst on the subject
of Hahnemann’s statues, I may mention that Leipzig, which refused to
Hahnemann a home in his life time accepted his statue a few years after
his death (1851), when his friends desired to erect one in his memory.
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