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!