Charles Friedrich Gottfried Trinks (1800-1868) – Pioneers of homeopathy by T. L. Bradford

Pioneers
of homeopathy

by Dr Thomas
Lindsey Bradford

Presented by Dr Robert Séror

Charles
Friedrich Gottfried Trinks (1800-1868)

Dr.
CHARLES FRIEDRICH GOTTFRIED TRINKS. (1800-1868)

The following biography was written by the old friend of Dr

Trinks, Dr. Hirschel,
soon after his death.

It was translated by Mr. Walter H.

Dunn,
of Cambridge, England, and published in the Monthly Homoeopathic Review :
(Monthly Hom. Rev., Vol. XIII., p. 122.)

Trinks

was born at Eythra, near Leipsic,
January 8, 1810. His father, Daniel
Gottfried Trinks, was a miller.

At nine years of age he was sent to the village school.
Fortunately for

Trinks, his father’s brother, Christian, was connected with this school.

He being a well educated man, soon perceived that in his nephew he had
a boy of more than ordinary ability entrusted to his care.

Under his direction

Trinks made his first acquaintance with Latin and French,
with history, mathematics and some branches of natural science.

With

Greek he scraped an acquaintance with no
other aid than that of a Greek
grammar.

In

1814 he was removed to the Grammar School of Merseburg. Here he worked hard, his industry being rewarded by the
love of his teachers and the generosity of his uncle, through whose
liberality he was enabled to devote himself to the study of medicine.

Unhappily his uncle died shortly after his entrance at the

University of Leipsic.
With his death his means of living became greatly straitened.

His mother having always opposed his desire to become a physician, in
the hope of turning him to more profitable account as a miller, limited
his allowance to some six shillings a week.

Trinks

was in
earnest, and a poor dinner never yet stood between the man who is really
in earnest in the acquirement of learning and the accomplishment of his
design.

What

Trinks wanted in money he made up for in
energy.

Before going to

Leipsic the surgeon of his native village, Bodentein by name, had given him some instruction in the
elementary parts of practical surgery.

With this gentleman, who removed to

Leipsic,
he resided during his career at the University, which commenced at Easter, 1817,
by his being enrolled a pupil of Beck, a
well-known physiologist of that day.

He remained at the

University until July, 1823, taking his degree of doctor of medicine in the
September following.

The title of the thesis defended by him on this oc

casion was as follows :

“De primariis quibusdam in medicamentorum viribus recte
aestimandis dijudicandisque impedimentis ac difficultatibus.”

In this essay the author displayed that love of therapeutics which he
never ceased to feel during the whole of his career, and to his intimate
acquaintance with which may be traced his success as a practical
physician.

In this youthful production he displayed, in correct and classical
Latin, the sources of error in acquiring a knowledge of remedies which
have arisen through theoretical speculation and fallacious experiments.

He pointed out the difficulties surrounding the prescription of
medicines caused by variations in the susceptibility and power of reaction
of the organism, those presented by age, sex, constitution, mode of life,
and by the combination of drugs in estimating aright the nature of
medicinal action.

The influence of the Homoeopathic school upon him is here observable in
his desire for experiment, for obtaining the specific and dynamic action
of drugs, and in the need he sees for a simple arrangement of remedies.

Previously to the time when this thesis was defended he had been
acquainted with some of

Hahnemann’s colleagues, with Franz and Hornburg,
and subsequently with Hartmann,
Langhammer and others.

No one, however, had greater influence over the young student than

Hartlaub, senior, who earnestly directed him to the new
therapeutic light, their mutual interest in which formed a bond of union
and enduring friendship.

Hahnemann

, whom he
frequently saw on the promenade at Leipsic,
he visited first at Coethen in 1825, again in 1832,
and once, subsequently, with Councillor Wolf.

In

1824 Trinks settled in Dresden. He and Ernst von Brunnow were the earliest Homoeopathists there.

His intellectual clearness, his critical acumen and ability as a
physician soon gave him that prominent position required for the success
of the new school, to the development of which he devoted an energy and a
zeal which could not brook imperfection in anything towards which they
were directed.

Notwithstanding his increasing professional engagements he felt dull
and lonely in

Dresden and removed to Bremen, only, however, to return to Dresden at the end of the year 1826.

His practice and reputation spread rapidly and provoked the enmity of
his Allopathic neighbors so far as to lead to his being summoned before
the magistrates on the charge of dispensing his own medicines, a practice
prohibited in

Germany, but long since permitted to
Homoeopathic physicians.

In December,

1827, he married.

In

1830 Trinks
attended the first meeting of Homoeopathic physicians held at Leipsic, and assisted at the foundation of the Central Society of German
Homoeopathic Physicians.

In

1832 he made the acquaintance of Griesselich, whose views, coinciding with his own, induced
him to contribute largely to the Hygea.

The only volume of importance published by him was that in which he was
a joint author with

Noacks – the well-known Noack and Trinks’ Handbook of
Materia Medica ; but
the essays he has contributed to the periodical literature of Homoeopathic
medicine are numerous.

The two diseases in the study of which he felt most interest were
typhus fever and cholera.

On the former he was engaged in the preparation of a monograph at the
time of his death.

In August,

1867, at a meeting of the Central Society, he excited the admiration of the
members present by his excellent, albeit extemporary, address on cholera.

In person

Trinks was tall and stately ; his head
handsome and well developed ; his blue eyes expressed the earnestness and
power of penetration which marked his character ; while the roseate hue of
his cheeks gave the old man quite a youthful freshness of countenance
which he never lost to the last.

Intellectually he was clear, keen, and critical to a fault.

It was in polemical rather than in original oratory that he excelled.
He was an eminently practical man with but little poetical taste. He
possessed a well stored and a wonderfully retentive memory.

This preference for fact over theory, his love for the real rather than
the ideal, contributed largely to make

Trinks
what he was, a thorough physician.

Homoeopathy he loved, because in its school alone did he meet with that
full development of the principle of pure observation he felt to he so
necessary for the practice of medicine.

A thoroughly independent thinker, it was not long before he found
himself somewhat opposed to

Hahnemann ; and on one occasion he had a warns discussion with Boenninghausen, when he endeavored to introduce
mixed medicines into the practice of Homoeopathy.

He most earnestly opposed everything in the shape of mysticism,
everything having the aspect of humbug with which it was sought to connect
Homoeopathy.

On these grounds he declared himself an enemy of the so-called high
potencies and a supporter of the lower dilutions.

Trinks’

manner to
one seeing him for the first time was often blunt and even somewhat
repulsive.

In diagnosis and prognosis a want of caution in communicating his
apprehensions to patients was often remarked in him.

His dietetic rules for those under his care were very rigid, his
prescriptions, carefully selected, were adhered to with a tenacity which,
though often regarded as unwise by those around him, was generally
rewarded by satisfactory results.

Books afforded him the only recreation from professional duty he cared
to enjoy. His habits were of the simplest, and their being so doubtless
conduced materially to maintain that degree of sound health which during
forty-four years of arduous professional labors knew not the interruption
of a single day.

His reputation as a physician, and his services to persons of high
rank, met with suitable acknowledgment in his decoration with several
royal orders and his advancement to the position of

Medical Councillor.

Throughout the

North
of Germany Trinks was
regarded as the most distinguished physician who had practiced Homoeopathy
since the time of Hahnemann.

His sound and varied learning, his thoroughly critical character, the
care he bestowed upon his patients, and the success which attended his
treatment of disease, together with his important and valuable
contributions to medical literature, rendered him much sought after by
patients, and his opinion highly esteemed by his medical brethren.

He died at

Dresden on, the 15 th of July, 1868, after an illness attended with much suffering.
His widow, a son holding a judicial position in Leipsic, and a daughter, the wife of a military officer, survive
him.

Dr.

Trinks died at Dresden. June 15, 1868,
at the age of sixty nine years. (Brit. Jour. Hom., Vol. XXVI_, p. 693.)

One of

Hahnemann’s earliest disciples, he was also one
of the greatest gains to the new system.

A man of indefatigable industry and self-sacrifice, he contributed
largely to the construction of the

Homoeopathic Materia Medica, and his name will be found constantly recurring
among the band of provers who aided Hahnemann in his Herculean task.

He edited with

Hartlaub the valuable Arzneimittellehre and Annalen, which gave to the world so many excellently
proved remedies and practical observations.

In conjunction with

Noack, or we should say almost
single-handed, for Noack soon gave up, he published the
Materia Medica that bears their joint names.

He was incessantly contributing papers of the most useful sort,
practical remarks, criticisms, to the Homoeopathic periodicals almost to
the day of his death.

In these papers he always showed himself fully tip to the science of
the day, and to the last he took the keenest interest in the progress made
in all branches of medical science.

At an early period of the history of Homoeopathy, when

Hahnemann was in danger of being led away by some of his
enthusiastic but incautious disciples to promulgate crude and untested
notions, Trinks’ common sense prevailed with the
founder of Homoeopathy and prevented hint committing himself to views that
could not stand the test of experience.

Trinks

enjoyed a
large practice and retained for life the confidence of a large circle of
patients.

He was a man of genial disposition and had a fund of wit and humor
which sparkled in his conversation and often appears in his writings.

He was buried at his birthplace,

Eythra,
a village not far from Leipsic, and was followed to his last
resting place by a numerous company of admiring and sorrowing friends.

WRITINGS.

De primariis quidbusdam in medicamentor. Viribus recte aestimandis
dijudicandisque impedimentis ac difficultatibus. Lipsiae : Brockhaus.

1823.

Homoeopathy, an Open Letter to Hufeland. For the Benefit of the
Homoeopathic Endowment Fund. Dresden : Arnold.

1830.

Samuel Hahnemann’s Merits in regard to the Heading Art. An Address at
the Meeting of Homoeopathic Physicians in Dresden. August 10, 1843.
Leipsic : Schumann.

1843.

Handbook of Homoeopathic Materia Medica. Edited by Noack, Trinks, and
Muller. Leipsic : Weigel.

1843-48.
[See also Hartlaub and Trinks.]

---

This biography is extracted from the book of Doctor Thomas Lindsley

Bradford (1847 – 1918) : ” The Pioneers of Homeopathy” 678 pages,
Boericke Tafel (Philadelphia, 1897).

Pages 123 to 127.

Numérisation,
vérification, mise en page,