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.