Hahnemann: The Father of Homeopathy - Part 1

I just finished reading "The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann" by Thomas Lindsley Bradford, and it has inspired me to write a series of blogs. This first one is about Hahnemann's younger years. The description "genius" can sometimes be applied without merit but, even as a boy, Hahnemann gave indications that he was a truly brilliant person.

When he was a grade-school boy, growing up in Meissen, Germany, his father would sometimes pull him out of school when the tuition money ran out (school was never free in those days). However, the "great men of the little German village" urged Hahnemann's father to keep him in school, granting Hahnemann scholarships and giving him (at 12 years of age!) the task of teaching basic (101) Greek to the other children.

His father came from a long line of tradesmen (he was a porcelain designer), and he could not envision any future for his son outside of that realm. He might have agreed to the school scholarships, but he discouraged Hahnnemann from devoting any additional time to books. But Hahnemann was determined, and devised a way to sneakily study at night. He handcrafted a small lamp out of clay so that his father wouldn't notice that a household lamp was missing. The lamp was shielded on three sides so that the light could not easily be seen through a window blind or from under a door.

At fifteen, his father insisted he learn a trade and sent him off to Leipzig to apprentice with a grocer. Hahnemann tried to comply but was miserable. He finally ran away from the grocery store, back to his home, and he hid from his father while appealing to his mother. She convinced her husband that, as a grocer, their son would not be following one of the fatherly principles he had tried to instill, which was "to live and to act without pretense or show." Once that pivotal episode resolved (with the help of Hahnemann's most prominent teacher, Magister Müller), the boy attended a boarding school for gifted students, more or less on scholarship.

His dream was to become a physician, and at the age of twenty, with letters of recommendation from all his teachers, and 20 thalers from his father, he left for Liepzig to attend the university there. At this point, he already knew English, French, Greek, Latin, Hebrew - in addition to his native German. He had also studied history, physics and botany, but his favorite topic was medical science. [Side note: The thaler was, more or less, Europe's first Euro. It gave Europe a standard unit of trade and was used for roughly 400 years. In Hahnemann's day, it was reportedly worth about a week's wages for a skilled laborer, so Hahnemann's father was as generous as his modest income would allow - a sign that he had finally accepted his son's destiny. But I digress....]

Despite the money that his father gave him, Hahnemann did not have a free ride at the University of Leipzig. He attended lectures during the day but he also worked most nights. Thanks to his excellent knowledge base, he was able to procure a job doing English-to-German translations. He also took on pupils who wanted to learn either German or French.

At the age of 22, he moved to Vienna to gain more extensive, firsthand knowledge of medicine. A celebrated physician, Dr. Von Quarin, became his mentor, and he was so impressed by Hahnemann's ability that he made him his protege and took him on visits to see private patients (something he had never done before). When Hahnemann's meager funds ran out, Dr. Von Quarin secured for him a paid position as family physician and librarian to the governor of Siebenburgen, Baron von Bruckenthal.

Hahnemann took full advantage of his status as librarian and read extensively, becoming proficient in additional languages - Italian, Syriac, Arabic, Spanish and even a little Chaldaic. He gained an excellent, self-taught classical education, acquiring a diverse knowledge of ancient literature and the occult sciences. It was with reluctance that he left this wonderful job to finish his degree at Erlangen University. But leave he did, and he was finally awarded his long-awaited medical degree in August 1779 at the age of 24.

He started his medical career in the mining town of Hettstadt, where he continued to enhance his knowledge, this time by reading about mining, smelting and chemistry. Less than a year later, he left for the town of Dessau, where he met (and later married)

19-year-old Miss Johanna Kuchler, the daughter (and step-daughter) of an apothecary.

Next time: Hahnemann's early life as a physician and husband.

My Funny Valentine

I "smile with my heart" about homeopathy, and each day is Valentine's Day with it.

I'm excited that more and more people are turning to homeopathy. We are entering an era in which more and more people are becoming mindful about being healthy, truly healthy. The narrative is shifting, and trust in alternative methods like homeopathy is growing as some of the old methods are tumbling off the pedestal.

I blogged about Introducing Homeopathy: The Film over a year ago, and the team behind the film has continued their work of making it an inspiring and informative feature-length documentary, in the hopes that one day it would reach millions of people.

That time has come! Introducing Homeopathy: The Film is hosting a free online screening in partnership with Children's Health Defense on Monday, February 17th at 10am and 6pm ET.

Are you ready to learn more about how homeopathy works? Don't miss this chance to see how homeopathy has transformed the lives of the several people whose healing journeys are showcased in the film.

Register for the Feb 17th screening HERE.

Happy New Year

I hope 2025 is a wonderful year for you, full of fulfilled dreams and memorable, happy moments!

I'll be going into year two of Dynamis School with Jeremy Sherr, learning more and more about how to be an effective "homœopathist," as Dr. John Epps called the profession.

Dr. John Epps was a homeopath in the mid-nineteenth century and I love how he describes homeopathy in "The Rejected Cases." The book contains several cases that he sent to the editor of the Lancet, Mr. Wakley, in the mid-1800s. It also contains the letter he wrote to Mr. Wakley as a result of the rejection of those cases. The editor refused to publish the additional homeopathic cases after publishing a previous one caused "an avalanche of letters from all parts of the country, couched in such terms as to make it next to impossible for us to insert any further communication of the kind."

Yes, homeopathy has always caused a stink in the standard medical community, but we (the homeopathic community) are feeling a shift—a good shift. I highly recommend that you give a listen to The Homeopathy Health Show sometime in 2025. Atiq Ahmad Bhatti, a 4th generation homeopath, hosts the podcast and interviews many homeopaths. He has a burgeoning audience and his more recent shows give hope about the future of homeopathy. I've linked to him on YouTube but you can find his podcast on Spotify and other channels.

Now back to Dr. John Epps' words to Mr. Wakley:

Homeopathy presents certainty, in presenting a law.

It teaches that a law regulates the action of medicines on diseased bodies: this law being, DISEASES ARE CURED MOST QUICKLY, SAFELY, AND EFFECTUALLY, BY MEDICINES WHICH ARE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING SYMPTOMS SIMILAR TO THOSE EXISTING IN THE PATIENT, AND WHICH CHARACTERIZE HIS DISORDER.

It maintains that this law is universal; that all medicines acting curatively, have acted, do act, and will forever act, in accordance with the principle embodied in this law; in fact, that all medicines are specifics—each one being specific to the given disease, of which, if taken by a healthy person, it produces the resemblance.

This clear, well-defined law gives certainty, and presents simplicity. It affords the foundation on which the homœopathist builds. It affords the mariner's compass, which enables him to steer clear of all the quicksands which the misdirected ability of Cullen, Boerrhave, Brown, Clutterbuck, Broussais, Armstrong, and others, have thrown up, to the destruction of medical navigators, and of the crews with which they were entrusted.

The homœopathist ensconces himself in this one point. He cannot be charged with beating about the bush. He stands upon a unity. He has no loophole of retreat. He gives his opponent the knowledge of his vital part. Disprove the law, and homœopathy is undone.

But in thus propounding his principle he feels his strength to be, that his foundation is in a law of the Creator—a law, the discovery of which arose from careful deduction, resulting from a happy coincidence which affected the mind of Hahnemann; even as a happy coincidence affected the mind of Newton, and led to the discovery, by deduction, of the law of gravitation.

Having this law, we need not be troubled, in our curative proceedings, by the contending opinions and never-ending inquiries respecting counteraction, revulsion, stimulation, depletion, palliation, and hoc genus omne.

We have one rule.

We have certainty; we have more, we have simplicity.

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In the Castlewood Trilogy, Fiona's confidence in homeopathy grows throughout. In book one, Love on the Vine, she learns about homeopathy for the first time and by book three, Love from the Past, she understands homeopathic law fully. If you haven't read the series, you can find it on Amazon!

Warm regards, Lucille