William Wesselhoeft (1794-1858) – Pioneers of homeopathy by T. L. Bradford

Pioneers
of homeopathy

by Dr Thomas
Lindsey Bradford

Presented by Dr Robert Séror

William
Wesselhoeft (1794-1858)

Photo not available

Dr.
WESSELHOEFT, WILLIAM. (1794-1858)

The facts in the life of this distinguished pioneer of Homoeopathy have
been so happily presented in a “

Memorial of William Wesselhoeft” by Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody (Boston
: N. C. Peabody. 1859) that we present the book here
almost in its entirety :

“The good die first ;

While those whose hearts are dry as summer dust

Burn to the socket.”

This has been the exclamation of Dr.

Wesselhoeft’s friends, alternating with the words of another poet,

“Our blessings brighten as they take the wing,” –

ever since his death ; for modesty, the poetical modesty founded on the
most dignified self-respect, was with him a trait so predominant they feel
that this community has ” entertained an angel unawares “

And he must not pass away without some slight memorial of the
sentiments with which he inspired those who knew him intimately.

A few days after his death some friends went to his afflicted family
and proposed erecting a monument to his memory on

Forest Hill. But it was their spontaneous and
prevailing instinct to say, ” No !”

It was unlike Dr.

Wesselhoeft to dwell in marble palaces, even in
the heyday of life. He had never any disposition to tower among his
fellows with conventional superiorities. Everything about him was of
intrinsic nature.

A grave bursting into flowers, with his name carved by the hands of
domestic love and personal friendship on a low lying block of the mountain
crystal, was in better keeping with the spirit of his life, which,
unostentatious and rich with the life of nature, delighted to call forth
health and beauty in others for their own sweet sake, by the operation of
laws –

” That keep the stars from wrong,

Through which the most ancient heavens are fresh and strong.”

Dr. William

Wesselhoeft was the second son of Karl Wesselhoeft, who, with his brother-in-law, Friedrich Frommann, owned the largest publishing house in the
university town of Jena during the palmy days of Saxe Weimar.

He had moved from the town of

Chemnitz
when William was four years old. Karl Wesselhoeft was a man of great energy and decision, and some
severity of character, but his wife was a woman of refined temperament and
intellect, of tender sensibility and disposition ; loving the beauty of
nature : forever garnering ” the harvest of a quiet eye;” and William,
her darling, inherited her traits of mind and body.

Born in

1794, when all Germany was just made newly conscious of the genius of her sons
by Goethe, Schiller and Jean Paul, it was William Wesselhoeft’s happy fortune to open his eyes upon life in Saxe-Weimar’s richest era of science and
literature.

The great

Goethe was a familiar guest at the home of
his uncle, Frommann, which was the rendez-vous of the
literati of Jena at that time ; and not unfrequently
at his own father’s house.

When

William was ten years old, the model
student of the Eighteenth Century took a kindly interest in
his commenting education, and gave pencils and paper and friendly councils
to him and his brother Robert (who was a year younger), in order
to induce them to draw ; for Goethe
considered drawing an essential of early education ; and it is well known
he excelled in this accomplishment himself, and pursued it to his latest
days.

This was but the first omen of the beautiful culture and superior
society whose advantages our friend enjoyed. Though Karl

Wesselhoeft, like the rest of his contemporaries, did not
escape the impoverishment widely produced in Germany by the wars of Napoleon,
he did not stint the education. A German
of the old country considers science and literature as much a necessity of
life as bread, if not as breath itself.

He had residing in his family, for private tutor of his children, the
celebrated De

Wette, afterwards Professor of Theology
at Berlin, and later at Basle : and, after De Wette, the excellent Dr. Grossman,
who died Superintendent of the Lutheran churches at Leipsic.

This family school consisted of

William,
his brothers, Edward and Robert, his sister, Wilhelmina, and a ward of his Uncle Frommann’s, Minna Herzlieb, celebrated in the memoires of Goethe as one of those ladies who won the great poet’s
heart for a season.

The education shared by these girls was therefore aesthetic, and a very
careful one ; as may be inferred from the circumstance, that

Wilhelmina, when but fifteen or sixteen years of age, went
for a year to the house of the clergyman Hecker, near Leipsic, to teach his children French and other things ; and there, as much of a
playfellow as a governess, laid the foundation of a lasting friendship
with Ferdinanda Hecker, who was at the time but fourteen
years of age, and ever afterwards visited the Wesselhoefts at Jena, and at length married Robert.

The correspondence with his sister, which Dr.

William Wesselhoeft diligently kept tip, during all his
American life, until her death in 1844, formed a little treasury of her letters, which,
with those of his beloved mother, he carefully preserved to reperuse in
his old age.

In

1809 William Wesselhoeft became a pupil at the Real Schule of Nuremburg, then under the direction of G. H.
von Schubert, in whose autobiography is made
frequent mention of this favorite pupil of the great natural philosopher
and psychologist.

Here, besides studying

Latin
and Greek, he began his profound studies in
the natural sciences, including anatomy, of which he was especially fond ;
and he also became very expert in anatomical drawings. Throughout his
life, all branches of natural history were favorite pursuits.

His botanical studies were very extensive ; and his choice

hortus siccus, with written explanations of every plant, is in
the possession of his wife, herself an ardent lover of flowers. During all
his student life, he was in the habit of extensive pedestrian tours to
make personal explorations in botany, mineralogy and geology.

His collections of mineral and geologic specimens he very recently put
in the hands of his friend, Dr. Adolphe

Douai,
who has undertaken to teach these sciences, among others, to the students
in the Perkins Institution for the Blind, whose handling of the specimens serves all the
purposes of sight.

But Dr.

Wesselhoeft did not confine himself to mere
accumulations of phenomena in the different departments of nature. He
penetrated into the principles of transcendental physics, and completed
his studies with the celebrated Oken
himself ; with whose numerous works, among others, his library is
enriched.

In

1813, being nineteen years of age, he
entered the University of Jena,
with limp qualifications for profiting by his lectures on the Philosophy of History and other sciences ; and there he
graduated, seven years after, as Doctor of Medicine ; having perfected his general and medical education at
the Universities of Berlin and Wurzburg, at each of which he resided for a season, and at which
he passed the second and third examinations, necessary in Germany for obtaining a license for medical practice.

Nor did these eighteen or twenty years of school and university
education make William

Wesselhoeft a mere book-worm. Never was a
scholar less pedantic in his manners. While at Jena, he enjoyed, as has been already mentioned, the esthetic
society of cultivated women as well as men, at his Uncle Frommann’s, who delighted to have his gifted and cultivated
nephew to adorn his reunions with the modest charm of his refined manners
and mind.

This was the time when

Goethe
was so much interested in meteorology ; and William Wesselhoeft very much enjoyed making observations on the
clouds for him, at the Observatory of Jena. He did this constantly for a year, and, by making
sketches of the clouds in watercolors, turned to account that skill in
drawing to which his illustrious friend had given hit the first impulse in
his early childhood.

Goethe

afterwards
gave tip the notion of determining the weather by the classification o the
forms of clouds, and laughed at it himself. But Dr. Wesselhoeft used often playfully to allude to his having
been clerk of the
weather for a year ; and to his latest day,
was exceedingly fond of looking at the skies, and observing the times and
seasons and circumstances of the strati, cumuli, schirri, &c.

A pencil, which he always cherished as a perfect relic, because it way
one that

Goethe gave him while they were pursuing
these investigations together, is still preserved among the family
treasures.

But Dr.

Wesselhoeft was not drawn into political
indifferency by his intimacy with the scientific and artistic Goethe.

He gave his heart and hand, with all the ardor of youthful love, to the
noble young men who had returned front fighting the battles of

German nationality, in which Koerner fell in 1806.

When in

Berlin, in 1819, he became very intimate with “tire old Jahn,” who invented the modern
system of gymnastics, and had established in that city a gymnasium as
early as 1811.

In the ”

Memoirs
of Dr. Follen,”
published in Boston in 1842, there is quite an extended notice of this Frederic
Ludwig Jahn. He published a work upon German nationality (” Deutsches Volksthum “), whose doctrine was, by means of
thorough physical education, to produce a manly character in the German youth, in the spirit of the motto which he
adopted for himself and his students ” Frisch, frei, frölich, und fromm ” (Strong, free, joyous and
pious).

As Dr.

Follen’s memoirs are accessible to
everybody, we will simply refer to this account, instead of reproducing
it. The Wesselhoefts and Dr. Follen were intimately acquainted.

The friend referred to in his memoirs, who induced Dr.

Follen to go to Jena to
lecture on the Pandects, was Dr. Robert Wesselhoeft, then a lawyer and holding office under the
government, and who afterwards bravely wrote a pamphlet to defend Dr. Follen against the infamous slanders of the “Memoirs of Herr von Doering.”

From this pamphlet are given many extracts, that not only throw great
light on the noble character and career of Dr.

Follen in Germany, but necessarily involve a vivid
view of the spirit and character of all the German students of that era,
including Jahn’s scholars.

In a slight memoir of Dr.

Wesselhoeft that has appeared in the Weimarer Zeitung, since his death, it is said that he
shared with many of Jahn’s scholars “die Wohnung auf der Hausvogtei, und
alsbald die Gewissheit, in Vaterland keine Anstellung zu finden.”

This non committal sentence of the timid conservative friend who penned
that memoir covers facts which may be less darkly hinted at in our free

America.

The

Burschenschaften, or secret political societies for
promoting the German nationality and in the end, uniting
Germany under one government, originated at
Jena, while William Wesselhoeft and his brother Robert were students ; and none were more engaged and active in
them than they.

By correspondence, the mother society spread its organization through
all the

German universities ; but the
branch-societies took different complexions according to local influences.

Some merely contented themselves with making a theoretical opposition
to the

Landmannschaften which were aristocratic, or
conservative societies.

Some went prospectively into details as to what was to be done to rid

Germany of the incubus of the reigning families, who
farmed it out for their own pleasure, reckless of the welfare of their
subjects : and these were disposed to re-establish the republican forms
which were indigenous in Germany.

Many of them were inspired by Dr.

Follen
with the idea of a Christian republic, to be evolved from
themselves as elements, by their earnest individual strivings after Christian perfection and national progress. In Dr. Follen’s memoirs, to which we have already referred, are
sonic elaborate details concerning, the societies of this phase, taken
partly from Robert
Wesselhoeft’s pamphlet
spoken of above : to which we are the more willing to refer our readers,
because there can hardly he a more profitable study for American youth than those particular gymnastic
communities which Dr. Follen’s spirit ruled.

But when, not long after, the strictly individual attempt of the rash
and theory-intoxicated

Sand had given a bad mime to the
patriots, these Burschenschaften were betrayed to the government by
a traitor ; and all the societies were confounded together in a sweeping
condemnation – the Christian Follen
and his friends with Red
Republicans.

The discovery of the

Carbonari in Italy was simultaneous with the discovery of the Burschen schaften
in Germany ; and the arrests in Germany were as un expected and indiscriminate as those
in Italy.

Thus, among others, William

Wesselhoeft, who was at the moment pursuing his studies in Berlin, was thrown into the Hausvogtei, which is a prison for political offenders ; and Robert Wesselhoeft, into the fortress of Magdeburg. William Wesselhoeft, however, found means to escape, after a two months’
imprisonment, and was for, a long time after concealed in his father’s
house at Jena.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the impulse
developed itself within him to go and assist the struggling

Greeks ; whose movement for freedom came like the sound
of a trumpet, from the old glorious times, upon all the cultivated young
men in Europe, and even reached those of America.

It was characteristic of the generosity and courage of William

Wesselhoeft, that, with his all-sided medical education
perfected, – and which included even a knowledge of the manufacture of
surgical instruments, – he should become surgeon to the German Philhellenen, just as the news came of the disastrous battle of Peta, in which all the officers of the corps of French and Germans
had perished, with two thirds of the members.

He started well equipped with the furniture of a surgeon. The
quantities of lint scraped and bandages oversewed by the enthusiastic
sympathy of his sister

Wilhelmina, his friend Ferdinanda, and others who were in the secret, were so
ample that they have served him for his surgery all his life, and are not
yet exhausted.

For he was disappointed of this expedition. When he arrived at

Marseille, he found an injunction laid upon the vessel. No
more volunteers could go to Greece.

From

Marseille, he went back to Switzerland, where already his friends Follen and Beck, –
the latter a step-son of his old tutor, De Wette, – and De Wette himself had fled ; and found congenial callings
at the ancient University of Basle,
which was then recently re-opened.

In this University Dr.

Wesselhoeft also found employment as demonstrator of anatomy and
assistant oculist ; and he remained busily occupied in instruction two
years, spending his vacations in pedestrian tours among the mountains ;
for not only explorations in natural science, but for pure love of the
picturesque, was a great motive of his pedestrian excursions at all times.

The scenery of every part of

Germany
that was beautiful or grand was already familiar to him by the same means
; and now that of Switzerland became so, and he was never weary
of the Alpine flora.

During the latter years of his life he cherished the hope and intention
of revisiting these scenes in

Germany
and Switzerland that ” haunted him like a passion :” and when he was weary, as
he often was, by the pressure of his unremitting labors, nothing soothed
and beguiled him more surely than for his sons and nephews – to whom he
had given a European education – to describe to him
their peregrinations in those familiar scenes.

The last picture that he purchased in the summer in which he died was a
remarkable sketch of the

Alps,
painted by Leute, where the needlewood-pines seem to
whisper of their solitude, and, as he said, of his “own youth.”

The same interference of the allied powers with the

German refugees in Switzerland, that drove Drs. Follen
and Beck from Basle, compelled Dr. Wesselhoeft to leave for America
at the same time.

Some letters which showed his sympathy with Dr.

Follen had fallen into the hands of the agents of the
despots. He came across the ocean, however, in a different vessel, which
sailed from Antwerp, and was four months on the sea.

Exile from home and friends was a sad thing to a temperament so
affectionate as Dr.

Wesselhoeft’s : and his love of nature’s beauty,
no less than the generous enthusiasm he had cherished for the freedom and
unity of Germany, had made the very soil of his
native Europe dear.

But he was still young enough to be susceptible to all the generous
hopes which the ideal republican of

Europe
reposes in the destiny of the United States of America. He felt himself strong in the consciousness of the high
cultivation of mind which makes a man the conqueror of success, wherever
he may he placed.

Immediately after his arrival he went to

Lehigh County,
Penn., where was
settled a German family which he had known at home.

From thence he proceeded to

Northampton County, seeking a sphere for his medical practice : and finally
settled in Bath, attracted, perhaps, by the German population.

This was not done, however, without efforts having been made by Drs.

Follen and Beck to
have him come to them in Massachusetts. It was in 1825
that Prof. Ticknor, at their instance, wrote to ask him to take charge of the Gymnasium at Cambridge and Boston
; which they hoped would reproduce Jahn’s
establishment at Berlin, though it never did so.

He refused ; however, for already a large and profitable practice was
opening upon him at

Bath : and here, in the course of a few
years, he married Miss Sarah Palmer,
in whose family he had become intimate by his professional calls to it as
an allopathic physician.

Both

German and English were spoken in this family ; and its members had early
become his warm friends.

But already he meditated the change in his practice ; and as this must
risk his income, at least for some years, he spoke to his wife of the plan
before he married her.

He represented to her that his study of medicine at the greatest
medical schools of

Germany – at Jena, Berlin and Wurzburg – had still left his mind
unsatisfied with any known system of therapeutics, and his practice had
confirmed his doubts.

” As to therapeutics,” said the lamented young

James Jackson, in his frank letters to his father
from the Medical School of Paris,
in 1835, – after he had studied, not only
in Boston, but in Edinburgh and London, -” we have not yet come
within sight of its shores.”

So also felt the accomplished

Wesselhoeft ten years before the date of that letter, and for similar
reasons, viz. : because he was thoroughly instructed in the so-called
scientific medicine of the schools, and had measured the limitations of
it, and was himself thoroughly honest, and with sufficient faith in nature
and God to believe with George Herbert that :

“All things unto our flesh are kind

In their descent and being, as to our mind

In their ascent and cause.”

“Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they

Find their acquaintance there.”

Not long after Dr.

Wesselhoeft had come to America, some of the first physicians of Weimar, and many of his own most respected classmates,
had become converts to the therapeutics of Hahnemann, and the latter wrote to Dr. Wesselhoeft urging upon him to make trial of the medicines, which
were sent him, together with Hahnemann’s ” Organon ” and “Provings,” by his father, who had also become a
convert to the system as patient.

At first he was averse to what seemed to be the other absurd extreme
from the then prevalent method of giving immense doses of such medicines
as

Calomel, the physicians of the day vying with each other
in the bold practice of enlarging doses to the utmost extent from which
any patient could rally, and under which numerous persons sank.

But he was very much struck with

Hahnemann’s “Provings.”

He felt it was no more than due respect to a man, who had worked for
twenty years himself, together with other men as earnest as himself, in
making a materia medica, to examine it carefully.

It had a quite different history, certainly, from the quack nostrums
which frequently solicit the attention of the public ; it had a scientific
origin.

The same love of truth and independence of tradition which had inspired
his studies with

Schubert and Oken, together with his personal modesty on the one hand and
his faith in the perfection of nature on the other, compelled him to
investigation.

And, when he had become convinced by personal observation that

Hahnemann’s preparations were effective, no timid
conservatism, no considerations of material prudence, restrained him from
dropping the methods he had already suspected of creating as much disease
as they cured, and of adopting one against which there was, at the time,
the universal prejudice which always attends new discoveries.

The infinitesimal doses were the hardest part of the method for him to
accept, though his common sense had revolted from the maximum doses of the
allopathic practice.

His very first experiment was in a case of ozoena, whose symptom
indicated

Hahnemann’s thirtieth dilution of some
medicine. He said :

” I was really ashamed to give the thirtieth dilution, and
substituted the sixth !”

When he went to his patient the next day, he found her sitting up in
bed, with the symptoms immensely aggravated, and very angry.

It was a lesson to him which he did not forget. The disease was cured
without another dose, as it might have been with far less suffering to the
patient had he given the finer dilution.

Among his first successes was his treatment of croup with

Spongia and Hepar.
He communicated
these cases to the best instructed German
physicians in his neighborhood – Dr. Freytag,
a Moravian, of Bethlehem ; and Dr. Detwiller, of Hellertown and engaged them and others in the
experimental investigation.

So great was the respect that Dr.

Wessolhoeft’s personal characteristics had inspired, that, although
some individuals were angry that he would not administer to them at their
desire allopathic medicines, most of those who had employed him before
continued to do so, and took the small doses ; for, when he became
convinced that the homoeopathic method was true, he felt it to be the best
evidence that the allopathic method was false ; and his conscience would
not permit him to tamper with this fearful and wonderful human frame.

He used to say, that if, when it was well constituted, it was hard to
drive from it the life, even with the whole circle of poisons, it was
always easy enough to fill it with chronic anguish, to be transmitted for
generations.

There is scarcely a drug in the allopathic practice of which

Hahnemann does not note the effects as diseases, and give
the antidotes. Dr. Wesselhoeft tested these notations in his own
practice as fast as possible, and in no instance came to a conclusion in
opposition to Hahnemann’s.

With views so serious and generous, it was not possible for Dr.

Wesselhoeft to content himself with personal success. The
increasing interest in Homeopathy soon suggested a Prover’s Union, of which he early became a
director, and in which he was always interested.

The homeopathic practice began to spread. Dr. Constantine

Hering, who was a student at the Medical School of the
University of Wurzburg after Dr. Wesselhoeft, and had afterwards studied with Hahnemann, himself, came, in 1833, to Pennsylvania from Surinam, where he had been practicing for some years.

Hearing of Dr.

Wesselhoeft’s practice, he immediately sought him
; and they conferred upon measures for establishing a medical school.

Some highly gifted and well-educated physicians of

Philadelphia, New York,
and other places, had become converts. It is also true, and ” pity ’tis, ’tis true,” that a great many
practitioners sprang up all over the country, who were not well educated
in pathology or general science, but who could take Hull’s.

Jahr

and other works
of the kind, and, by means of that tact so very common a characteristic of
Americans, treat acute and well-defined
symptoms so felicitously as to astonish and gain the confidence of
multitudes.

Dr.

Wesselhoeft always said of these practitioners,
that they did not do so much harm as even educated allopathists
necessarily do ; because the medicines, if mistaken, were generally
harmless, the specifics requiring a certain susceptibility in the patient
to insure an effect.

It was chronic disease, where symptoms were obscure and complicated,
that was the test of a fully educated homoeopathic physician.

Still it was mortification to him, who had the interests of the system
so much at heart, that the allopathic physicians of our principal cities,
often highly educated in general science and accomplished in literature,
should have the chance of reproaching Homoeopathy with the ignorance of
its practitioners.

It is not worth while to go into the details of the foundation of the
school at

Allentown. A company was formed, and six
acres of land purchased in a beautiful spot, and the two wings of a large
building erected, where resorted students (generally speaking, allopathic
physicians who had become converts to Hahnemann’s principle). Dr. Hering
became the director 1d chief instructor.

But the constitution of the school was never quite satisfactory to Drs.

Hering and Wesselhoeft. Too many of the company had only a pecuniary interest in
its success, and were inclined to sacrifice the interests of the system by
admitting unqualified students.

Dr.

Hering was invited into Philadelphia, where a large practice awaited
him, and where he could choose those students to whose instructions he
would devote himself. Then Dr. Wesselhoeft removed from Bath to
Allentown and took up the forlorn hope ;
although, by so doing, he abandoned again a large and lucrative practice.
It was, however, a vain attempt.

He also became discouraged about the school ; and, in

1842, determined to remove to Boston, Mass.,
although his removal to Allentown had not proved the pecuniary
disadvantage he expected it to be ; for his practice there immediately
became extensive and profitable.

There was also a domestic reason for this removal. For a year before he
left

Allentown, he had had the happiness of the
society of his brother Robert and his family.

Robert Wesselhoeft

was, as has been said, a distinguished lawyer in Weimar, and officer of the government, when he was arrested,
with other members of the Burschenschaften, and imprisoned at Magdeburg.

It was not

carcere
dura, like that of the Italians in Spielburg ; but, during the seven years of his imprisonment, he had
considerable intercourse, especially with the physicians of Magdeburg, and devoted himself to the study of natural
sciences and medicine, and became interested in hydropathy.

Being released from prison at the accession of

Frederic William IV. of Prussia, who signalized that event by
setting free all the political prisoners, he returned to Jena, where he immediately married, resumed the
practice of his profession, and had his old office conferred upon him
again.

But it was found that his long imprisonment had not at all changed his
liberal principles, and he was the more interesting to many by reason of
his long martyrdom to them. His influence, in short, was feared ; and the
government, who could find no pretext for making any accusation against
him, at length requested him to leave

Europe,
and proposed to pay him a large sum of money – considerably more than
would cover the expense – if he would remove his family to America.

But, while he was yet in

Europe,
he had gone to the water cure establishments of Ilmenau and Carlsbad for his own health, which had been
injured by his imprisonment and his subsequent labors in his office ; and
thus he had become acquainted with the practice of
water-cure, and he came to America
with quite an enthusiasm to spread it in the New World, where, as yet, there was not one
establishment.

Dr. William

Wesselhoeft approved of water cure as an agent
of hygiene ; but he succeeded in convincing his brother that it did not
take the place entirely of medication by homoeopathic remedies ; and Robert was initiated by his brother into the materia
medica, during his year’s residence in Allentown.

But Dr. William

Wesselhoeft gave his hearty sympathy to the
project of establishing the water-cure. Water was an admirable regimen to
purify the system which had been abused by drugs, and restore its normal
susceptibility to the delicate medication of Hahnemann.

When Dr. Robert

Wesselhoeft had been able, during a residence
of a year or two in Cambridge, to obtain some co-operation in his
plan, Dr. William Wesselhoeft, who removed to Boston meanwhile, and immediately entered upon a large
and lucrative practice, proved his most efficient aid in founding the Battleborough Water Cure.

There is no doubt that Dr.

Wesselhoeft had the most agreeable expectations, with respect to
society, in removing from the interior of Pennsylvania to Boston ; as he had not been insensible to
the immense change from Saxe-Weimar to Northampton county, where, though the population was friendly and
most respectable, it left the scholar and gentleman to sigh occasionally
for the circles of his youth, which Goethe
had graced with front sublime as Jove
and where Jean Paul
Richter poured out his
rich and beautiful humor.

He doubtless expected that he should find himself in a generous and
noble intercourse with the scientific physicians of

Boston, who would not fail in the courteous attention
to one whose culture was nearly unparalled, in any country, for its
scientific completeness, however they might demur to practitioners who had
no regular education in pathology.

He probably looked forward to persuading them to faithful examination
of the new system, now that there was so favorable an opportunity for
studying it with one who had first anxiously explored their own ground.

At all events, so generous a mind could not suppose that so serious a
subject to humanity would be dismissed with old saws of conservatism,
spiced with cavalier jokes. without even the pretence of serious
examination.

Very poor seemed to him that kind of wit which tyrannized over the
medical society of

Boston, compared with the rich humor of
his countryman and personal friend. Jean Paul, – das Einige, – that had played, like the educated
sunshine, over the morning of his own life ; and which, instead of
terrifying the weak and vain and susceptible, with coxcombical sneer, from
that which might perhaps be known, burst through the barriers of the dead
past, and found new worlds of life to sport in, with the creative
frolicsomeness of inventive power, irrepressible in its glorious courage,
as the spirit of Hafiz, when he proposed to ” break up the tiresome old sky.”

Dr.

Wesselhoeft subsequently passed his own sons
and nephews through the Medical School of Boston, because he was altogether too liberal to undervalue, in
their own departments of science, those who took no pains to inquire into
his possible knowledge, in that one ” whose shores have not been approached within
sight ” by any of
them. according to the confession of their own brightest ornament.

Besides, he wished those, whose medical education he directed, to know
all that could be said for the errors which they were to oppose in their
practice ; having a serious contempt for the wisdom that preserved its own
self respect by ignoring what, if admitted, might possibly show its
treasures to be folly.

Dr.

Wesselhoeft, as Mr. Parker said at his funeral, when he saw what his path was to be,
had too much dignity to complain, or rail at or ridicule others ; but,
with modest self-respect, proceeded to practice down opposition,
for which he had ample opportunity.

He was not wholly alone.

There were already four or five homoeopathic physicians in and around

Boston, recent converts from Allopathy ; and it was
noteworthy, that the extensive and lucrative practice which some of them
had previously had took away all color of suspicion that anything but
conscientious conviction had led them to the adoption of the new method.

Dr.

Wesselhoeft’s greater age and experience in this
new method naturally gave him the lead, and he was soon too much absorbed
in the excessive labors which his professional calls brought upon him, to
regret a social intercourse with his opponents, for which he had no time.

His success in the treatment of scarlet fever opened the hearts of
mothers, and forthwith introduced him into the bosom of the most
conservative families ; for scarlet fever had become the terror of

Boston. Once established in the nurseries, his
influence and practice spread. His professional income soon became so
ample, that, but for the drain upon it to support the establishment at Battleborough, he would have died,” as a newspaper obituary of his death
observed, ” rolling in wealth.”

Nor was the

Battleborough Institution unsuccessful. There
were years when the receipts were $ 25,ooo.

But the

Wesselhoefts were better physicians than
financiers, Their dearest objects were other than pecuniary, in
establishing the homoeopathic and hydropathic systems. They gave away as
much cure as they were paid for, always in the generous confidence, that
at last, if not at first, their disinterested faith would be appreciated,
and open the eyes of others to what they believed to be great humane
interests.

Besides, the revolutions of

1848
made immense drafts upon their sympathies, especially those of Dr. William
Wesselhoeft, whose position in Boston made him a centre of refuge.

How many gathered about his hospitable board for several years. A
political exile himself, he knew how to feel for the political

exile, who came here so often,
without the profession or education which secured to himself a position.

Nor was it the unfortunate of his own countrymen alone that secured his
sympathy and aid. But we must turn away from a theme on which gratitude
would delight to dwell.

Dr.

Wesselhoeft, after he was in Boston, still had students of Homoeopathy in such
measure as he could attend to in his private study, but he especially
interested himself in educating the young men of his own and brother’s
family, to take his place by and by as strict Hahnemannists. When he died there were eight times as many
homoeopathic physicians in and around Boston
as there were when he came.

But many of these were of what they call the

eclectic school, mingling allopathic and homoeopathic methods in
what he conceived to be a most unphilosophical manner, and sometimes
giving allopathic doses of homoeopathic medicines.

He was a strict

Hahnemannist ; but he had not any conservative
bigotry. He was aware that Hahnemann had not completed the science and art
of medicine.

He accepted the progress into higher dynamization that the thirtieth
(which

Hahnemann had suggested as possible, but, as
he thought, undervalued) ; for experiment of the same kind that had
convinced Hahnemann of the efficacy of the thirtieth,
sanctioned the higher ones ; and he used to say that the kind of
theoretical arguments brought against the highest, if allowed, would
condemn even the lowest.

He preferred the word ”

dynamization ” to ” dilution,”
for the efficacy was in their dynamic force in relation to the vital
forces, which no chemistry or mechanic laws can estimate.

The power of an infinitesimal dose was no more, but just as
inexplicable as the power of an infinitesimal particle of light to awaken
delight in the owner of the retina of nerves that reflects it ; or, if
that is diseased, to inflict torture upon it. The question always was

of the fact.

“There are more things in heaven and earth,

Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in our philosophy;”

and these things are of daily and unquestionable

experience. Dr. Wesselhoeft constantly declared, that, in this
infancy of homoeopathic science, the Baconian
method of experiment and collection of phenomena must be faithfully
followed for a long time yet, before a scientific explanation could be
hoped ; and he had a stern feeling of disapprobation, bordering on
contempt, at the presumptuous levity that so easily questioned the
principles any conclusions of the conscientious and faithful founder of
the school, who did not open his lips until he had worked twenty years.

It would not being doing justice to our friend’s solemn convictions not
to say this, however, severely it may cut in some quarters.

The character of Dr.

Wesselhoeft has been, perhaps, more forcibly
set forth by the mere narrative of his life, than it can be by
disquisition.

Love of truth and beauty ; a conscience of the duty of entire and
manifold culture ; industry ; fidelity to every opportunity of gaining new
light ; a manly and generous sympathy with all social and national
development towards freedom ; delicacy and sweetness in all family
relations, and to all friends, unostentatious hospitality that was
cosmopolitan personal habits of self denial and disinterestedness that
seemed hardly to have a limit ; the modest charm of unconsciousness which
classed him with

” Glad hearts, without reproach or blot,

Who do [

God’s] will, and know it not ;’ –

kindness, that, though it was habitual and constant as the sun, had a
morning freshness about its every manifestation ; and, with all this, a
simplicity, directness, and honesty in speech, that often offended the
vain and conventional : such were the traits that characterized Dr.

Wesselhoeft.

They enriched his life ; but some of them brought about his early
death, which, however, as

Jean Paul has beautifully said, is the secret of nature for getting more life.

He was not unaware, during all the last year, that he was presuming on
a constitution exhausted by the unremitting labor his profession
necessarily involved : and he admitted to a brother-physician, who
realized his exhausted condition more than the sufferer did himself, that
he ought to give up his practice, and go to

Europe ; for nothing less insurmountable than the ocean could
divide him from his patients.

But, though he was happy in the thought that his son and nephew could
take up his practice, with steadfastness of fidelity to the strict
homoeopathic principle like his own, he was beguiled to wait a little
longer, and a little longer, to attend to some patients that did not like
to be given up.

Thus he ran on, in the spirit of self-sacrifice, till the silver string
was suddenly loosed, the golden bowl broken, and he fell.

A few weeks in the country, which it is pleasant to remember how he
enjoyed, hardly brought to himself the conviction that he was going ; or
he rallied in the mountain air which he sought.

But a relapse, caused by an accidental cold, brought him back to the
city ; and he sent to

Philadelphia for his friend, Dr. Hering, refusing to see all others, that he might have
strength to talk with him.

About twelve hours before he could expect him to arrive, probably a
sudden conviction of his impending departure struck his mind.

He was sitting by his wife, with her hand in his ; when suddenly he
brought his other hand upon it, pressed it tenderly several times, and
said,

” Will you go with me ? ”

rose tip, made two or three firm steps towards the bed, and fell upon
his face. On being lifted up, they saw that he was ”

beyond and above.”

When the tidings spread through the city that he was gone, the
expression of sorrow and sympathy with the bereaved was very great. It was
a touching thing to see how much the respect and love felt for him was
expressed in rare and beautiful flowers.

A profusion of these smiles of nature, woven into exquisite garlands
and wreaths and crowns, came from his friends and patients, far and near,
whose greenhouses and house plant she had never failed to dwell upon with
delight when he visited them.

On the day of his funeral, these tributes of affection were hung about
his coffin ; and the Rev. Theodore

Parker
– friend, and in part a patient – stood at the head of it, and made a
tributary discourse to his memory, which was responded to by the tears of
a large company that encircled the weeping family.

Dr.

Douai followed with an impassioned
address to the Germans in their own language ; and then
Mr. Parker, in a touching prayer, thanked God for the life that had been so noble and
beneficent, and implored consolation for the misfortune such a death must
ever be to the surviving.

The company also went to

Forest Hill ; and there, under a tree, in the glow of sunset, the
coffin was again opened, that every friend might take a last look at the
beloved features ; and, the flowers being again hung round it, a strain of
exquisite vocal music, from a choir of German
friends who where hidden in the trees that grew over the tomb, rose and
fell, and rose and fell, for ten minutes.

It seemed like the song of angels who were conveying the spirit to its
heavenly home.

Dr.

Wesselhoeft, born into the Lutheran communion, sympathized with the New Church,
initiated by Swedenborg ; more than with any other ; though
he did not belong to any organized society of it, and doubted whether Swedenborg himself intended his disciples should form any
church more visible than the communion of faith and charity to which all
the churches of Christendom introduce sincere and loving souls.

Dr.

Wesselhoeft died at Boston, September 1, 1858.

(Memorial to William Wesselhoeft. By Elizabeth P. Peabody, Boston,
1859.

N. Am. Jour. Hom., vol. 7, p. 400.

Trans. Am. Inst. Hom., 1859.

Am. Hom. Rev., vol. 2, p. 96.

World’s Conv., vol. 2, p. 709.

Trans. Mass. Hom. Soc., vol. 1, p. 36.)

Numérisation,
vérification, mise en page,