The Friend of Health, part 3

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, wrote a short piece in "The Friend of Health" about how good can exist even in things that are generally recognized as bad.

He tells this story:

It is well known that the tailor's trade is not one of the healthiest occupations. We find in these good folks, if they are diligent workmen, usually emaciated legs, knock-knees, a dragging of the left leg, rounded shoulders, the head bent forwards, drawn-in abdomen, and so forth … and yet there are cases in which this mode of life has been favorable to health.

A young man in England was born with the feet turned inwards. A surgeon whom his mother consulted pronounced the deformity incurable. When he grew up, he could only walk with difficulty upon the outer border of his feet and heels, he always knocked one foot against the other, and frequently fell; the muscles of his thighs and calves were extremely attenuated, and the turned-in feet were so deformed, that shoes of a particular shape and tie had to be made for him.

The poor house authorities bound him apprentice to a tailor, thinking that this was the only trade that his deformity permitted him to follow. In the work whereby one usually sits at the shop-board, as is well known, with the legs crossed, he observed a gradual change in his limbs, which, without the slightest employment of external or internal remedies, continued to turn outwards. In the course of three years they attained their natural position, so that he could wear ordinary shoes…the muscles of his legs grew stout, and his body was so well formed that he enlisted in the marines, and thenceforward remained in the service.

Hahnemann gives the mechanics of this muscular miracle, which I won't share here. He also asserts that since cabinet makers usually have the right shoulder higher than the left (if right-handed), individuals whose left shoulder is higher might want to try that trade to balance their shoulder muscles.

He treated military men stationed in the various towns in which he lived, and he writes of sword wounds to the chest opening and draining old purulent deposits which, once healed, facilitated better health overall. He saw a paralyzed person recover perfect use of all his limbs after being struck by lightning. And he knew of a depressed man who cut open the veins in his neck, lost much blood, but lived to tell the tale and thereafter recovered from his "melancholy madness."

He gives instances of people he knew who became wiser and better by disease, or grew into more useful members of society due to calamity and misery: A man becoming a physician because of his delicate state of health; Someone who almost drowned learning to swim and later saving the life of someone floundering in deep water; A police-inspector insuring that the fire engines in his town were in perfect working order after his house burned down; And a person terrorized by thunderstorms bringing lightning conductors to his city.

And he mentions Pfeffel and Euler, who lost their sight and yet surpassed most of their fellow-beings in poetical and mathematical talent.

Those who overcame adversity are not limited to Hahnemann's generation. From more modern times, Stevie Wonder, Helen Keller, and Erik Weihenmayer, who scaled Mount Everest, are a few others who overcame their blindness, and countless others have overcome adversity of all kinds and done great things.

Who do you admire who has overcome adversity? I'd love to hear about them!

The Friend of Health, part 2

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of the homeopathic system of medicine, would have been amused by the current fad of mushroom coffee. He wasn't a fan of broad statements about what is or is not healthy, and would disagree with the mushroom coffee promoters, who say that everyone should drink two cups a day to improve mental clarity and gut health. Hahnemann believed that people should develop their own instincts about what is best to eat and drink, and not depend on others for their menus. Trusting our instincts is something he strongly believed in.

His Dietetic Conversation, in his book The Friend of Health, begins with a humorous retelling of an exchange with his brother:

Brother: Are you not ashamed of yourself, to be eating pears early in the morning? You will chill your stomach…

Hahnemann: Certainly not, for I have no fear of such a catastrophe. But tell me, at what time of day should one eat fruit?

Brother: After dinner, and as a rule, after having taken something warm in the stomach; such was the opinion of our ancestors, and they were no fools.

Hahnemann: But we moderns, on the contrary, are of course? ...But tell me, can the stomach of different individuals be regulated by one general rule, even were it as old as the twelve commandments? Is not every one's stomach as peculiar as every person's foot, which the shoe of another will not and cannot fit?

The conversation continues but, to sum it up, Hahnemann writes (my edits in parentheses) …"where is the wise man to be found who is capable of rightly dictating to me in a book, once and for all, what and how much I ought to eat and drink? …I must judge by my own sensations what and how much will suit me; I must know it, or no one else can, unless, perhaps, my ordinary medical attendant.

How can a thing that we swallow be, under all circumstances and in every condition of the body, universally wholesome, healthful, innocent, hurtful, or poisonous? There is a time for everything, says the (sage), and to my mind he speaks much more sensibly than most of the (dieticians)."

Hahnemann tells the story of a woman he treated following a difficult labor, who had intolerable after-pains and a great loss of blood. "She cried for coffee, although when she was well, she could scarcely endure it…A few cups of very strong coffee were given to her, and the hemorrhage and pains ceased suddenly; opium would have had no effect in such a case."

He tells of another instance: "The (sickly) woman in the family way puts chalk into her mouth and if we keep it from her, she scrapes the lime from the wall and consumes it. She knows not that she has an intolerable acid in her stomach, and still less does she know the chemical property of the chalk of neutralizing and removing acids. Nevertheless, an awakened wise instinct implanted by the infinitely wise Creator steers her in a direction of lessening her ailment."

And: "The man who is extremely exhausted from starvation desires a spoonful of wine; what tells him that a supply of meat and bread which an ignorant person would endeavor to force him to swallow, might prove fatal to him?"

And: "A person who has contracted a bilious fever…longs for nothing so much as fruit. Who tells him that this is almost the only thing that can do him good?"

Hahnemann concludes, "I might give you many more examples of the expression of the instinct of the stomach, did I not fear to weary you. We understand it under the terms of appetite and repugnance, two very important but much neglected monitors for our well-being!

If we would only study this voice of nature often enough, and in a perfectly unprejudiced manner, we would obtain a great facility in understanding its feeblest manifestations; we should be enabled thereby to escape a large number of diseases, and in many cases to attain to long life without difficulty.

But we find (as a proof of all I have said) that this small voice of nature is only audible to persons who live upon very simple articles of food, and that they come at last to understand it in a very remarkable manner; almost just as the cattle, which we allow to range at large over the fields, never swallow a plant that would hurt them, but only those that are suitable for them.

This feeling, this instinct, as I may term it, is in persons who regard moderation as one of the greatest virtues, so watchful, so active – they hear this internal voice as distinctly as any animal to which we especially attribute instinct, so distinctly, that they can determine to a mouthful when they have taken enough for their heath."

Centuries later, people are still not encouraged to trust their instincts. We are trained from an early age to listen instead to our parents, our teachers, our friends, our doctors, our politicians, and even our celebrities. What if, instead, we began looking within, exploring that unique inner voice that has been silenced?

Hahnemann speaks of the need for "simple articles of food," which today means real food.  Wouldn't we feel better if we stopped eating products that are filled with impossible-to-pronounce ingredients, which serve only to preserve, enhance taste or—on a more diabolical level—to increase cravings or monetize waste products?

Do you have any comments or thoughts? I'd love to hear from you!

The Friend of Health, part 1

My new series will showcase Dr. Samuel Hahnemann's two-part book, The Friend of Health. He wrote part one in 1792, when his disillusionment of standard medicine was growing but he hadn't yet matured his homeopathic method. The book shows what treatment practices he employed when homeopathic medicines were not yet available to him. And the fact that his ideas on hygiene, diet and the environment are still relevant today says much about his perspicacity.

I'll let Hahnemann speak for himself now, and only provide a few modern edits (in parentheses) for clarification. He wrote in the preface of the book:

"When we behold the large family of mankind acting as they do, when we see with what perseverance they go through their more or less important spheres of action, which some (compelling emotion) often traces out for them, when we see how they all strive after the attainment of some kind of happiness, be it ease, rank, money, learning, amusement or excitement, scarcely deigning to cast a single glance towards the real blessings of this world, wisdom and health, which beckon them back to Eden, we can scarcely refrain from pitying a race of such noble origin and high destiny...

(It is my mission) only to preach upon the greatest of corporeal blessings, health, which scarcely any take the trouble to seek after, and few know how to value until it is lost.

We indeed hear it occasionally remarked that this or the other article of diet is wholesome or hurtful, that this or that remedy is a specific for this or that disease, that this or that habit is injurious...people interest themselves with fashionable modes of treatment, (impressive) diseases, cases of sudden death, beautifying remedies, and anecdotes about physicians. But all this is vain trifling.

The lover of highly spiced dishes exclaims against the indigestible nature of puddings; the tea-drinker can speak like a book about the evils of (drinking alcohol); the lady who has a weakness for coffee talks learnedly on the coarse juices of her who has a liking for beer; the guzzler of puddings declaims upon the poisonous nature of mushrooms.

Hearken to that gouty fellow how well he can describe the hurtful character of the day-labourer's life; to that young gentleman with his pimpled face, how he depicts the disadvantages of a sedentary life; hear how that lady who sticks close to her tapestry work inveighs against the dangers of dancing; and how the dancing nymph points out that much sewing causes (anemia). All know something, only not what is wholesome for themselves....

I should like to know if there is any condition in life, where some medical knowledge and some care for our own...health are not necessary....

Oh! that in the following pages I were so fortunate as to be able to contribute something to the happiness of mankind, if they would listen to the voice of a warm friend of his fellow creatures, as if it were the voice of a friend!"

This blog series won't cover every chapter of Hahnemann's book. Some chapters are truly obsolete, like the one on hydrophobia - a disease that was horrible in Hahnemann's time since there was no reliable cure. But I'll pick out the parts that still apply today, detailing them here one at a time. I hope you enjoy the new series!