Hahnemann: The Father of Homeopathy - Part 6

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann was 57 years old when he earned the right to teach at Leipzig University by giving a brilliant thesis on Helleborism of the Ancients (see part 5). He did not reveal that he would be teaching homeopathy—there was no mention of homeopathic truths in his thesis—but that is exactly what he did. His plan was to teach malleable minds, since he had given up on reaching the closed-minded established physicians. He wrote, “No, it is only the young whose heads are not deluged to overflowing with a flood of everyday dogmas, and in whose arteries there runs not yet the stream of medical prejudice; it is only such young and candid natures, on whom truth and philanthropy have got a hold, who are open to our simple doctrine of medicine.”

Hahnemann gave two weekly lectures during his time as a professor in Leipzig (1812 – 1821). His classes were attended by students, some physicians, and by a few non-medical people as well, such as Baron Ernst Georg von Brunnow, a law student whose “bodily sufferings” Hahnemann’s remedies helped greatly. The lectures were well-attended at first, because Hahnemann was making wonderful cures in Leipzig. However, his lectures contained vociferous attacks on the old methods, leaving no doubt that he thought them antiquated, dangerous, and lazy. Perhaps if he had been more temperate in describing them, he might have attracted more adherents, but his strict code of truth did not allow him to whitewash the Old School’s ways.

[An aside: Baron von Brunnow gave up his career in law due to his delicate constitution and devoted his life to literary pursuits. He became an "ardent champion of the cause," and translated Hahnemann’s “Organon of Medicine” into French and assisted with the translation of Hahnemann’s Materia Medica into Latin. He was also a poet and a novelist.]

It was during these Leipzig years that Hahnemann, with a loyal group of students nicknamed The Provers' Union, experimented with medicines to the point of being able to publish a huge amount of information about them (see part 4 to better understand provings). This extensive symptom documentation has been the means of “removing much suffering from humanity,” because this bank of symptoms, when searched with a specific patient in mind, points the way to a well-selected remedy. [Homeopathic repertories have organized the symptoms so that they are easily searchable.]

We owe a debt of gratitude to one of Hahnemann’s “most zealous” students, Franz Hartmann, who was part of The Provers' Union and went on to become a renowned homeopath. He documented his time with Hahnemann in great detail, writing, “when I made Hahnemann’s acquaintance, his fame was widespread, and he performed cures which bordered on the incredible, and which established his reputation more and more permanently.” And wrote, “He took pleasure in conversing with me on the sciences, and was always most enthusiastic when on the subject of Materia Medica and therapeutics. I always took especial pains to add fuel to the fire, partly because his fiery zeal was entertaining, and partly because I acquired thereby such a knowledge of Homeopathy, and for many practical observations upon Homeopathy I am indebted to these explosions.” He also gives a detailed physical description of Hahnemann in these years, as “a small, thick-set man, constrained in his gait and bearing, with a bald head and a high, beautifully formed forehead.” And when in the midst of his fiery zeal, “the blood at such times crowded up to his head, the veins became turgid, the brow was flushed, his brilliant eyes sparkled, and he was obliged to take off his little cap to admit the cool air to his heated head.” But when outside the classroom and surrounded by those he trusted, he displayed “the mirthful humor, the familiarity and openness, the wit.” Hahnemann's choice of clothes also demonstrated the difference between his professional and his home life. In his classroom he dressed simply, in a dark coat. When entertaining friends at home, he preferred a “gaily figured” dressing gown.

In 1813, a typhus epidemic came to Leipzig and Hahnemann’s success in treating it silenced his critics for a time. He lost only two patients, whereas the other physicians lost many more than that. He gained many “followers,” but eventually the Old School once again tried to stop his progress. Baron von Brunnow (mentioned above) writes, “His flourishing practice and numerous adherents had become too alarming to his adversaries not to prompt them to take such active measures for his suppression as lay within their power.” Hahnemann was, once again, in trouble for dispensing his own medicines, just as he had been in Konigslutter (see part 5). The year was 1820, but Hahnemann got a small reprieve from the court proceedings because one of the heroes of the Napoleonic war, Field Marshal Prince Schwartzenberg, asked Hahnemann to help him recover from a life-threatening ailment. He initially asked Hahnemann to visit him in Vienna, but Hahnemann responded that “his many literary and scientific labors would not permit so long an absence from Liepzig.” So this celebrated war hero came to Hahnemann, which created quite a bit of jealousy amongst the other physicians.

Homeopathy helped Prince Schwartzenberg recover to some extent, but his hedonistic lifestyle had worn down his body and he eventually died. Brunnow wrote, “To the astonishment of all, the patient felt himself better from day to day, and he was seen driving about after a little time; but the powers of life had been too much weakened to permit of his recovery.” And, “Although the post-mortem proved that no medical skill could by any possibility have been successful in the case, yet the issue of it was very injurious to Hahnemann.” Prince Schwartzenberg’s physician claimed that Hahnemann’s refusal to employ “powerful measures” hastened the prince’s death, despite the fact that the physician had also continued to bleed him. In any event, his death caused the suspended legal processes against Hahnemann to resume with increased vigor, and he was ultimately ordered to stop dispensing his own medicines.

With the persecution of Hahnemann came the persecution of many of his students. To give one example, Christian Gottlob Hornburg, a medical student at the University of Liepzig, especially loved Hahnemann’s lectures and grasped the topic so thoroughly that he was able to achieve several astounding cures himself. He had already earned his baccalaureate, and was doing work towards his medical degree so, strictly speaking, he was not supposed to be seeing patients. Other medical students, who were not proponents of Homeopathy, also gave medical advice and escaped reproof, but because his cures were homeopathic, Hornburg was persecuted. He was fined, and the authorities even went so far as to take his homeopathic medicines from his home and publicly burn them. Worse, and in large part because he spoke so critically about the old methods, he was never awarded his medical degree. He tried in several universities and failed; the “powers that be” wanted to make an example of him. He eventually gave up trying to earn a degree, but never stopped practicing homeopathy. Unfortunately, his tormentors never stopped either, always looking for ways to punish him. In 1833, about fifteen years after his remedies had been publicly burned, he was condemned to two months’ imprisonment for treating a woman with pneumonia who later died at the hands of regular physicians. They knew she had worked with Hornburg and blamed her death on him. The news of this judgement devastated Hornburg. He was recovering from influenza when he learned of it, so not in perfect health, and the shock—and very possibly the imprisonment itself—caused him to go into a decline. He was dead six months later. Fortunately, many of those in Hahnemann’s Provers' Union sidestepped or survived the Old School’s persecution and carried on practicing homeopathy quite successfully, including Hartmann (mentioned above).

All Hahnemann ever wanted to do, always for the absolute good of humanity, was to dispense the simple medicines that he so thoroughly understood, that he himself had made so that he could guarantee their quality, and to share his new method with anyone who was open to learning it. But after nearly ten years of teaching at the University of Leipzig, his dream came to an end. This last battle was the final straw for Hahnemann, who was now 66 years old. He determined to move his family once again, and sent out enquiries to find a place in which he could attain the peace and quiet he needed to continue his research and practice homeopathy without the constant battles. In the spring of 1821, the Grand Duke Frederick of Anhalt-Coethen invited Hahnemann to become private physician to himself and his wife and, perhaps more importantly, gave him free reign to “practice according to the feelings of his heart.”

Next: Hahnemann’s Coethen years, part I

Hahnemann: The Father of Homeopathy - Part 5

The turn of the century was a trying time for Samuel Hahnemann, especially in relation to his ability to practice his new method. If you remember from part 4, Hahnemann started using homeopathy with patients around 1796, in Konigslutter. But a few years later, his success during a scarlet fever epidemic caused his “professional brethren” to turn on him. Hahnemann’s patients rarely died, whereas the other physicians had significantly higher mortality rates. Nonsensically, rather than embrace the new and better method, they decided that Hahnemann had to go, and they joined forces to make that happen. Physicians elsewhere, in other cities, used the same ammunition to stop Hahnemann from practicing, meaning that as long as he refused to use the apothecaries for his medicines, he was not allowed to practice, and since he had a low opinion of apothecaries, thanks to his vast experience of them, he would never agree to use them.

It looked like his professional brethren had checkmated him. He was “poor and persecuted, driven from town to town,” and actually spent time back in Dessau, residing with his wife’s stepfather. He “lived by himself, and in his study, laying aside all medical practice” in order to “devote more time to the elaboration of the homeopathic method of healing.” I haven’t found additional details about these months in Dessau, but I’ve wondered if his wife and children lived with her mother while Hahnemann lived above his (step) father-in-law’s apothecary shop “by himself.” Did Samuel and Johanna go through a period of separation?

During this time, Hahnemann’s translation work also tapered off. His bitterness had caused his footnotes and forwards to become too sarcastic and derogatory, so the booksellers stopped hiring him. In one of his last translations, “Thesaurus Medicaminum, a New Collection of Medical Prescriptions,” he denounced the whole book, and commented sarcastically (when five substances were recommended for one prescription), “Why not include, also, the entire Materia Medica?”

But he published many articles and continued to dabble in his hobby, chemistry. He also wrote editorials to the non-medical public, defending his good name against the many slanderous attacks coming from his enemies, the non-homeopathic physicians. His optimism about revolutionizing medicine sharply declined during this period, as reflected in a quote from 1801: “The perfecting of our science in this new century is becoming an increasingly sad and gloomy business; without professional liberality and friendliness it will continue to be a science for bunglers for another full century.”

His chemistry hobby got him into a bit of trouble around 1800, and the error he made was thrown in his face for the rest of his life by all who wanted to discredit him. He made the mistake of saying he had found a new chemical salt that later turned out to be Borax, a quite well-known substance. Hahnemann admitted his mistake, refunded monies gained by the substance, and explained in several journals, “I am incapable of willfully deceiving. I may, like other men, be unintentionally mistaken. I am in the same boat with Klaproth and his ‘Diamond Spar,’ and with Proust and his ‘Pearl salt.” [NOTE: The chemists of the day were always seeking new substances, and often made mistakes. One chemist, Van Ruprecht, made three new discoveries that all turned out to be iron, the errors most likely caused by his rusty crucibles.]

And all through these difficult years Hahnemann continued to fight for the ability to make his single-remedy medicines, comparing enforced restrictions to a great artist who is told he cannot prepare his own “expressive, beautiful, and durable colors.” Instead of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian creating masterpieces, their paintings “would have been ordinary daubs and mere market goods” had they been ordered to purchase their colors from a shop. In 1805, he published, “Aesculapius in the Balance,” in which he gives detailed arguments against the laws pertaining to apothecaries, revealing that an apothecary often “sends a different prescription from the chemically impossible one ordered by the physician, or substitutes one drug for another.” He says that, rather than prohibiting a physician from making his own medicine, “the physician should be prohibited, under the severest penalties, from allowing any other person to prepare the medicines required for his patients,” particularly since he’s the only one responsible for the outcome. In 1805, Hahnemann also published the first book on his provings, described in part 4.

The publicity from the scarlet fever epidemic caused Hahnemann to receive many letters containing requests for medical help, which he answered if they contained a fee. Slowly, his finances began to improve, and around 1805 he moved his family to Torgau, where he stayed for 6 or 7 years—a long time for him. He even bought a house with a garden, and he also began treating patients again. Perhaps the physicians backed off from their persecutions since “Aesculapius in the Balance” had outed the apothecaries so thoroughly that it would be difficult to defend them.

Hahnemann was in Torgau when he published his textbook on homeopathy, "Organon of Medicine," in 1810. A grateful patient/publisher in Dresden agreed to print the book, but it certainly didn’t fly off the shelves. Nevertheless, its publication unleashed a tidal wave of hatred from physicians and “was the signal for the commencement of a violent warfare against Hahnemann.” The "Organon of Medicine" besmirched their morals as well as their methods, so the gauntlet was officially thrown down. Dr. Constantine Hering, one of the first homeopaths to set up practice in America, wrote of the event, “It is disgusting to state how it was received; it was, and it remains forever, an inexcusable meanness of the whole profession.” One Dr. A. F. Hecker, of Berlin, panned the book so viciously that even Hahnemann’s opponents defended him against that review.

[An aside: Hering, born in 1800 in Germany, moved to Philadelphia in 1833 and is considered the Father of Homeopathy in the Americas. A medical doctor, he initially set out to expose homeopathy as a sham and was ultimately convinced of its validity when the homeopathic remedy Arsenicum album cured him of a gangrenous dissecting wound. Many physicians came to support homeopathy in this way—by trying it for themselves.]

Hahnemann rarely responded directly to the physicians. He didn’t want to give strength to their accusations by acknowledging them. However, the critique of his textbook pushed him to the limit. In a letter to his publisher, he wrote, “If Hecker and opponents of his stamp remain unrefuted, I cannot with honor go on with the educational works I am projecting, and even the Organon itself will cease to be respected. No one would believe the effect such mendacious representations have on the public.” He asked his son, Friedrich, to write a pamphlet refuting the many critiques. Friedrich, who was 24 years old and studying to become a doctor himself, was listed as author, but it was clear to those who were familiar with Hahnemann’s writings that he had guided his son’s hand.

The positive side of all the bad publicity was that it gained Hahnemann many converts to his new system of healing. Those with open minds, who were willing to give homeopathy a try, often continued with it—some partially, others wholeheartedly. But Hahnemann saw the wisdom of sharing his method with medical students, who had not yet had the old methods firmly fixed in their minds. In 1811, he decided to “engage more actively in the propagation of his new system by means of didactic lectures.” He moved his family back to “the great medical city of Leipzig,” and gave a brilliant thesis entitled, “A Medical Historical Dissertation on the Helleborism of the Ancients.” His dissertation is a “wonder of philological research,” and its brilliance earned him the right to lecture in the Medical Department at the University of Leipzig.

Hahnemann: The Father of Homeopathy - Part 4

In Part 3 of my blog on Hahnemann, you learned how he discovered the Law of Similars in medicine. He took a medicinal substance when healthy, and it gave him the symptoms of the illness that it was known to cure. When he stopped taking the substance, the symptoms went away, returning if he took it again, so causation was firmly established.

[An aside: To this day, homeopaths (and volunteers) experience and record the symptoms of substances by taking part in organized “provings.” A proving provides the necessary raw data, which is then published and organized into homeopathic repertories, which are used to find the symptoms that clients report during consultations. A remedy recommendation is rarely based on just the pathological symptoms. Preferences, aversions, causative factors, and general tendencies are also taken into consideration. A cohesive whole that makes logical sense is the goal, and finding the remedy picture takes skill and experience. Some homeopaths are better able to find the picture than others, which is why it’s good to get a referral when looking for a homeopath.]

Returning to Hahnemann, he continued his literary pursuits during the six years that he conducted provings on a variety of substances (1790 - 1796). He wrote part two of “Friends to Health,” giving good advice on subjects ranging from the importance of fresh air to the importance of cheerfulness. He began an important work, “Pharmaceutical Lexicon,” which ultimately “received the praise of all the scientific physicians of the day, and became the standard work on pharmacy.” His translations continued as well, earning him many accolades, and included Rousseau’s “Handbook for Mothers” and Taplin’s “Veterinary Medicine.” As always, he enriched his translations with extensive forwards and footnotes.

Hahnemann moved his family hither and yon for both financial and occupational reasons, finally settling in Konigslutter around 1795, where he would eventually begin practicing medicine again with his new homeopathic system. In 1795, Hahnemann was 40 years old and had six living children, one son and five daughters. One daughter, a twin, had been stillborn.

In that same year (1795) a personal friend of his, Christoph Hufeland, launched a new medical journal. Hahnemann’s first article in it was an account of his cure of an insane man that had occurred in 1793. You might ask: How did he cure someone when he had given up practicing medicine? Hahnemann was thrust into the spotlight when he publicly stated that Leopold II of Austria was bled to death during his last (and fatal) illness. His outspokenness about the evils of venesection caught the attention of Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coberg-Gotha, who wrote to Hahnemann, asking him to try his hand at curing Herr Friedrich Klockenbring, Minister of Police and secretary to the Chancellor of Hanover, who had developed a “most fearful madness.” His fee of 1,000 thalers was too substantial to refuse, especially considering how financially strapped the family was.

Hahnemann moved his family to the Duke’s beautiful lands in 1792, where temporary housing for Klockenbring had been established. The Hahnemanns lived in a wing of the Duke’s hunting castle, which seemed like paradise after their tiny house in Stotteritz. Meanwhile, Hahnemann went to work on the patient, and he writes that he watched the man carefully for two weeks before giving any medicine. In those days, the typical treatment for mentally ill people was quite punitive and violent, but Hahnemann would not allow such barbaric methods—he was one of the first advocates for the humane treatment of the insane. Klockenbring was cured of his illness under Hahnemann’s treatment, and details of the recovery were published in Hufeland’s journal. In the same volume, he published the article “Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs." Its tone was “calm and impartial” because the new method and its discoverer had not yet come under attack.

Hahnemann published numerous articles in Hufeland’s journal. Some of them showcased his new medical model, for instance when he wrote about a case deemed hopeless that was cured “by means of a medicine producing very similar morbid symptoms." Some were more general, such as his article entitled “Are the Obstacles to Certainty and Simplicity in Practical Medicine Insurmountable?” He was trying, in a gentle and persuasive way, to induce his “professional brethren” to use “simple remedies given according to a precise law.” But his articles weren’t changing many minds. Most physicians still championed the old methods, particularly those whose careers had earned them fame and fortune.

Hahnemann started practicing medicine again around 1796, treating patients with one, well-indicated remedy at a time. The other physicians were tolerant of him until a scarlet fever epidemic came to Konigslutter around 1798-1799. By using the homeopathic remedy Belladonna, Hahnemann had remarkable success with both the prevention and treatment of this dreaded disease. His “brethren,” not as successful, must have felt embarrassed, threatened and jealous, which would explain their next actions.

The non-homeopathic physicians of Konigslutter joined ranks to plan Hahnemann’s professional demise. They hit on the idea of bringing charges against him for dispensing his own medicines (instead of using the apothecaries) and carried the plan forward. In Part 2 of this blog, I told how Hahnemann once inspected apothecary shops in his influential position as Stadtphysikus in Gommern, forming a none-too-good opinion of them; As mentioned above, his extensive knowledge of chemistry as it related to pharmacy was so apparent in his Pharmaceutical Lexicon that it became the standard reference for apothecaries. The charge brought against Hahnemann was ridiculous and he appealed it, arguing that the law governing apothecaries related only to making compound medicines, and that his single-substance medicines fell outside that jurisdiction. He lost his appeal and once again had to decide where to move his family so that he could practice homeopathy without hindrance. He reached out to his friend, Duke Ernst, but unfortunately the man had recently died.

The patients he had helped in Konigslutter didn’t want him to move, and several of them “accompanied him some distance,” wishing him God speed along the way. He had decided to put a great distance between himself and Konigslutter, moving almost 140 miles northwest, to Hamburg. It was a perilous journey for the Hahnemann family. Along the way, the large carriage he had purchased for the move overturned on a stretch of bad road, and an infant son was so badly injured that he died shortly afterward. One daughter broke a leg, and Hahnemann himself was considerably bruised. Much of his property was damaged when it rolled into the stream that ran at the bottom of the road. With the assistance of some local peasants, they made it to the nearest village where they stayed for six weeks while his daughter’s leg healed. They finally entered Hamburg in early 1800.

Word of Hahnemann’s success during the scarlet fever epidemic spread, and he received letters from people far and wide asking for medical advice. The volume of letters was proof of the new system’s merit, but unfortunately most of them did not include a fee. This expectation for free medical advice irked Hahnemann, who still struggled to support his family. In an attempt to discourage the free-loaders, he (on two separate occasions) published a letter to “the Public.” In it, he announced 1) that he would no longer accept letters that were not postpaid, 2) that even if a letter was postpaid, he would send it back if it did not contain at least a “Friedrich d’or” (which, after doing some research appears to be approximately $100), and 3) that he would send all letters containing lottery tickets back. His public letters “aroused a very great amount of adverse criticism,” since such announcements were unheard of. They also gave the other physicians one more thing to hold against him. [NOTE: Lotteries were very popular in 1800. In fact, according to Google AI, the brokers who hired agents to sell lottery shares in the German states later evolved into the modern stockbrokers.]

Of course, everyone wanted to know what Hahnemann had used to successfully combat scarlet fever, but his professionalism and caution made him hesitant. Belladonna, a known poison, could be dangerous if handled incorrectly by the wrong people (the apothecaries of the day), so Hahnemann devised a plan that would allow him to make the medicine “carefully by his own hand” and share it with his country. He asked for 300 subscribers, at one Friedrich d’or each, who would, as members, get his medicine with full directions for its proper use. Once he had distributed medicine to 300 subscribers, he would then publish details of the medicine’s beneficial effects, also revealing its name.

His rigorous standard for honesty was not compatible with his marketing endeavor. When advertising his subscription, he let it be known that “he deserved something from both the public and from the Government for his most important discovery.” Needless to say, he got “scarcely a fourth part of the number” of subscribers and a “vast amount of abuse and calumny.” Those who subscribed were mostly physicians who were dealing with epidemics of scarlet fever themselves, and Hahnemann begged them to report their findings “be it what it might” … but they did not. He wrote an article entitled “Considerations Upon the Liberality of the Medical Fraternity at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century” in which he writes, “Physicians of Germany, be brothers, be fair, be just!” It was the last thing he ever wrote in a spirit of conciliation. Henceforth, he continued to follow his own path and seldom responded to the attacks of the other doctors, whom he now viewed with “disfavor and contempt.”

In 1801, he published the pamphlet “Cure and Prevention of Scarlet Fever,” despite the fact that he never got his 300 subscribers.

NEXT: Hahnemann continues to treat patients with homeopathy, despite the many obstacles placed in his way by his medical peers. He publishes “The Organon of Medicine,” detailing his homeopathic method and creating the vehicle that carries homeopathy far beyond Germany.