Third Chapter SAMUEL HAHNEMANN AND THE BEGINNING OF HOMEOPATHY It is quite extraordinary and historically unique that one person should create a whole new branch of science from its foundation, lay out its main principles and work them into the details, while the subsequent two hundred years of development in the field would only verify his findings. Also that he would have the stamina to convince others of his truth, and during his lifetime be able to see the world-wide expansion of the method he had created. The Childhood He was born on 10th April 1755 in Meissen, very shortly before midnight, this is why 11th April is sometimes given as his day of birth. He died eighty eight years later, on 2nd July 1843 in Paris. Samuel grew up in poor circumstances. His father worked in a factory as a painter on porcelain. He was a man of strict manners. There is a story that he used to lock his young son inside a room, where he was to meditate upon the significance of such terms as "nobleness", "vulgarity", etc. Hahnemann was reputedly a timid and well brought up child, an ardent reader. His first and probably only revolt against parental will came when, after finishing school at the age of fourteen, he was sent to Leipzig as an apprentice to a greengrocer. He stayed there for a while, but soon discovered that becoming a greengrocer would not exactly fulfil his life ambitions. He ran away and came back to Meissen, where his mother hid him for a week in the attic, before they both could gather the courage to tell the father what had happened. The Studies Commencing medicinal studies in Leipzig, he continued in Wienna and received his diploma at the University of Erlangen. During his studies he sustained himself by teaching foreign languages (altogether he mastered eight) and through book translations. He also worked as an apothecary's assistant. Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, the Austrian Governor of Transylvania, took him to the place of his duties where, still a student, he was to treat his family, look after his coin collection and the sizeable library. The swampy region of Raab and Timisoara abounded with malaria - and Hahnemann's stay there would appear to be significant in the view of his later discoveries. At the time he was critical of the Materia Medica by the Scottish doctor William Cullen, particularly its recommendation regarding the treatment of malaria: "The author is wrong: it appears that he is not conversant with the tenacious intermittent fevers of warmer regions, full of marshes. I have observed such in the low regions of Hungary, and particularly in the towns well sheltered from the surrounding marshes... where the state of bad health almost totally prevails, of which the repetitious fever appears to be a mere symptom." Before long, his personal experience from the fever stricken regions would bear its fruit. At the time, on Brukenthal's recommendation, he entered a Masonic Lodge. Early Discoveries After completing his studies Hahnemann several times changed the location of his practice. Even then he fully realised the weaknesses of the contemporary medical science: "When I perceived the weak points and mistakes of my teachers and books, I fell into the state of disconsolate hopelessness". He started to carry out chemical experiments, quite often at the druggist's laboratory in Dessau. It cannot be ruled out that helping him there was the seventeen year old daughter of the apothecary, Henrietta, whom he eventually was to marry and with whom in time he would have ten children. Almost simultaneous with these events is the beginning of his publishing activity. He published the first papers concerning the orthodox treatment, where he criticised the current medical practices. And at the same time, about twenty seven years old, he laid the foundation stones of the new method of treatment. To verify some suggestions in the Cullen's Materia Medica regarding the treatment of malaria by quinine, he made the first homeopathic experiment on himself. For several days in the morning and in the afternoon, he would take "four drams of a good quinine". Gradually he began to feel coolness in his fingertips and his toes, then torpidness, the heartbeat and the pulse quickened, he felt anxiety and trepidation, pounding in his temples, his facial colour turned red... in short he displayed the symptoms of malaria, including the periodicity of its attacks. From this experience he deduced the first precept of homeopathy: "Quinine, which is used for treatment of malaria works, because it can induce in a healthy person the symptoms similar to malaria". Nevertheless, the process of ripening would continue for two more decades, of experimentation with other remedies, on his own person and on volunteers, of gaining experience in the clinical practice, of evaluating the connections and the principles. Another British scientist who had significant influence on his research was Edward Jenner, who in 1796 found the vaccination against small-pox, using a live vaccine prepared from the cow-pox. Judging from Hahnemann's treatises, the use of such vaccination must have been already widespread at the beginning of the 19th Century. If we give a thought to the two systems, it appears that they have a great deal in common, particularly in their principle. In homeopathic potencies some bacteria, pathological discharges, puss, diseased tissues etc., are used, the so called nosods, which can have not only therapeutic but also preventative effect. The Organon Only in 1810 The Organon of Medicine was published in Leipzig, in which the entire system of homeopathic treatment is outlined and described. During the lifetime of its author it went through four more editions, which were in passing changed and corrected (2nd edition 1819, 3rd edition 1824, 4th edition 1829, 5th edition 1833). The sixth edition, edited by the author, came out a long time after Hahnemann's death. Anyone concerned with homeopathy must pay attention to this book, wanting or not wanting. The Organon, in its 291 paragraphs and with numerous subsequently added notes, offers not only the basics of homeopathic treatment, but also very detailed suggestions on treatment. At the same time it warns against the mistakes in treatment, those made out of ignorance, or even intentionally. A large part of the work, particularly the sixth edition, is formed from the polemics with allopathy, or the orthodox medicine. The word allopathy is derived from the Greek allos, different. As opposed to the homeopath, an allopath administers the medication to the patient, which has a different effect on the organism than the disease. This means relieving fever with aspirin, etc. There is an antagonistic reaction and the result (if the medication works) is the suppression of the symptom. The cause of the symptom remains unchanged. Ninety nine percent of all non-homeopathic medications in our chemists' stores are allopathic drugs. Naturally, it was the same in Hahnemann's time. The orthodox medicine only occasionally accepts remedies with homeopathic properties - such as the preparations from pollen, against allergy. Hahnemann, impressed by the wonderful results of his own remedies and especially of his own method, capable of returning health to people, and influenced by the destructive effects of suppressive drugs, which he knew all too well from his pre-homeopathic practice, completely denounced allopathy. His arguments are fascinating, especially as while designed to attack the medicinal practice of his time, which in its technical details was understandably quite different from ours, they are practically without an alteration applicable to the contemporary allopathy. The antagonism of homeopathy and allopathy, or the "old school", as he already calls it in the Organon, is evident not only in their opposing principles of treatment and in the fact that homeopathic and allopathic remedies, when administered at the same time, negate each other's effects, but also in the social and philosophical spheres - the same antithesis we find everywhere. As this is quite a problematic matter, we will treat the relationship of homeopathy with allopathy (or the orthodox medicine, the old school) in a separate chapter. Hahnemann in his Organon: a) In the light of the new method offered a thorough criticism of allopathic treatment. b) Outlined the basic principle of the new treatment, i.e. prescribing the remedy accordingly to its similarity to a particular disease. c) Designed the course of examinations that determine the effect of remedy on a healthy person. d) Established that only one remedy should be given at any time, as only one correctly selected remedy can affect the totality of all symptoms of the patient. Thanks to the proving, we know the effects of the remedies described in the Materia Medicas. If we mixed two or more remedies together, we would get a compound of unknown properties, where the parts interfere with each other. It would be a shot into the dark. The practice has reliably proved that such mixtures have uncertain or suppressive effects, discrediting homeopathy through their results. If the remedy does not work as it should and does not bring about a complete cure, any fine tuning must always be done through the more accurate prescription of a homeopathic remedy. Hahnemann called the practitioners allured to combining the homeopathic remedies with the occasional use of conventional orthodox drugs, rather than of the correct similium, "the homeopathic bastards", and often publicly attacked them. He worried that if such improper practices were to become widespread, homeopathy could cease to exist. Hahnemann's conscientiousness on the one hand assured that homeopathy as a pure idea had survived and progressed further, on the other hand it made him a lot of enemies, not only from the ranks of allopaths, but also in the camp of "lukewarm" followers of homeopathy, who also used the allopathic methods. e) Hahnemann described the process of manufacturing remedies and how to make them into homeopathic potencies through successive dilution and shaking. f) He defined the philosophical horizon of the treatment, which at the first sight does not appear to be directly related to the medical practice, but to a deeper and more informed viewer it forms the core of the system. Those unable to perceive this core can never become good and successful homeopaths. They will always be liable to be seduced by the opposing systems of thought and would incline towards using allopathy to suppress an illness. In this context, Hahnemann (and naturally all of his followers), was marked by the allopaths as a dogmatist, insistent on his truth to the letter and incapable of any dialogue. Hahnemann nevertheless pointed out that homeopathy when practised only partially, with some of its principles rejected, i.e. the product of such a "dialogue", is no longer homeopathy and does not achieve the curative results. The same dogmatic approach can be observed in other fields too. For example, the mathematicians dogmatically insist that 1 + 1 = 2 and no one could talk them out of it; if they abandoned their dogma, the whole system of mathematics would collapse. With homeopathy it is the same. When its basic principles are deserted, the system collapses, the treatment becomes haphazard, the results uncertain, it is no longer capable of curing chronic diseases, it may perhaps be of a suppressive character. g) Hahnemann established how the patient should be examined. h) He outlined how the case should be followed further, and stated that the remedy should be applied again only when the curative effect of the first dose had ceased, and the disease tends to return to its original state before the treatment. i) He said that disease is never a single entity, nothing that exists on its own, nothing that could be passed on as an item. Disease is always a fault within the dynamic system of organism. Disease means that something in the organism, either in the psychology or its physical parts, unwinds in a different way than it should. "There are no diseases, there are only diseased people". By this Hahnemann implied that diseases mean nothing to him, that they are no leading strings to therapy. The remedy must always be selected in accordance to the overall state of the organism. j) Hahnemann established that the organism (including the psyche) is guided by the non material "animating force", "dynamis", a non material organising principle. In a healthy organism, a healthy organising principle rules. Such organism cannot be touched by any disease, and from experience we know, that many people do not fall ill during the epidemics, even though they breathe the same air, drink the same water and eat the same food as those who become ill. An inclination towards illness occurs only when the organising principle has been disturbed. Then there is the inclination towards pathology. When administering a homeopathic remedy, first restored is the organising principle, it then restores to health the body and the mind. The bacteria, running a riot on the tonsils, disappear in a short while after the remedy was taken, without a need to kill them by antibiotics. They depart, rejected by the healthy organism, which again has a healthful governing centre. All disorders come from this centre. This is a well known truth, understood by the economists, as well as the politicians. A bad government means that the country is on the decline. The success of any company depends above all on its management. The company that is well managed with inventiveness and flexibility will survive during a recession. Even if attacked by terrorists, it will repair the damage, dress its wounds, restore its workmen; so long as it has capable managerial staff, who had secured ample financial reserves, who had sent out the rescue workers, who had organised the help to the victims, etc. The far-sighted management may even warn off any terrorists before they strike. An organism with a healthful centre will defy any bacteria. The logic of this is quite clear, nevertheless the only problem is that to date no X-ray, no microscope, not even a magnetic resonance, let alone a scalpel, have been able to reveal such a governing centre. This is the fundamental problem in the controversy of idealism with materialism. The materialists insist on having some tangible evidence. Why, they have it. There is the health, given to many people by homeopathic remedies. k) In the context of the above, Hahnemann said that even the smallest dose (or the highest potency) can never be as subtle as the actual cause of the disease. Essentially this means that the disease is always of a spiritual origin. A brave idea? Hardly. A logical one. There is something spiritual in any idealistic system in the first place, and something material as its consequence, in the second place. l) Hahnemann laid out the dietary rules that the patient should follow. They were a great deal stricter than those held by the contemporary homeopaths. For example, among others, he did not recommend tea or pork meat. The Position of Homeopathy is Established Since 1811 Hahnemann lectured in homeopathy at the University of Leipzig, both to medical practitioners and to students. To enable him to commence lecturing, he had to submit and exonerate his thesis, which he cautiously had not aimed at homeopathy, as he was anticipating a fierce opposition. The thesis concerned the history of medicine. The lectures were not a spectacular success. The hall was never filled anywhere near its capacity and the students tended to drop out. The novelty of his method would strike them as too daring. In addition to that some professors needled Hahnemann, and even threatened sanctions against the students who visited his lectures on homeopathy. But the core of the followers of homeopathy remained. These students and doctors admired not only Hahnemann's ideas, but also the interesting manner of their presentation. He lectured with passion and pre-possession and often did not choose his words when attacking his numerous opponents. He did not obtain any remuneration for his lecturing. Devoted pupils visited him at home, where he received them in his gown, with a long pipe in hand. While drinking tea was to him a transgression against the treatment, smoking was agreeable. It is one of the few points, where some of his modern followers hold a different opinion. The effectiveness of the radical new method of treatment came to light for the first time during the epidemic of typhoid, which occurred after the famous Battle of the Nations near Leipzig, in 1813. Soon after the defeat of Napoleon's troops by the Coalition of European Armies, followed by large casualties among the troops and great hardship among the populace, the epidemic of typhoid broke out. While other doctors were losing up to one third of their patients, out of Hahnemann's patients - altogether there were 183 - only one old woman died. Hahnemann became famous. Even Prince Charles I. of Schwarzenberg, the Commander of the Coalition Armies, asked to be treated by him. The personality of star proportions, indeed. His right hand was paralysed and overall he was in a bad state of health. Hahnemann nevertheless flatly refused to go to see him in Vienna. Incidentally, Vienna at the time was the city where the most famous medical capacities denounced homeopathy as sciolism. The gravely ill prince, with his whole entourage, thus had to travel to Leipzig. Hahnemann prescribed the remedy and visited him regularly. He ordered him to stop drinking alcohol (evidently the commander's weakness), and stipulated that he should not follow the advise of his other two personal physicians he had brought with him, particularly that he should not take any other medication, or undertake any other medical treatment. Schwazenberg's condition had improved, but as soon as it happened, the commander resumed his drinking activities and also allowed his physicians to somewhat "improve" the results of Hahnemann's labours through their methods. When Hahnemann found out, he sent the thirty golden pieces, which was to be his reward, back to the prince, acquitted himself of the impotent potentate, and left him in the hands of his allopaths. About three weeks later, the prince passed on. Hahnemann stressed that homeopathic remedies should be prepared by the practitioner himself, which was not to the liking of the Leipzig apothecaries who felt that it might pose a threat to their businesses, so they took a court action against Hahnemann. The crown issued a decree preventing Hahnemann from using self-prepared remedies on his patients. He was to order them from the licensed apothecaries. Understandably, many of Hahnemann's jealous colleagues did not like his celebrity status, and he was also to face the attacks from their side. Despite of all these skirmishes and friction concerning the social grounding of homeopathy, Hahnemann kept his busy working schedule, his treatment and his many experiments. He published the results of his work. Between 1811 and 1821, he published the six volumes of his original homeopathic Materia Medica - "The Pure Teachings of Remedies", or "Materia Medica Pura". In this very important work he lists the descriptions of properties of many homeopathic remedies. Longing for a more relaxed atmosphere, in 1821 he accepted the invitation of a certain nobleman, who conferred the title of Court Councillor on him, to move to a small town of Köthen. By then homeopathy had already gained a world-wide recognition, its founder was often visited by colleagues and patients from anywhere in Europe and from overseas. The first homeopathic speciality magazines were being published, founded were the specialised homeopathic hospitals, first in Leipzig, then in Munich and in Wienna. In 1829 a grand celebration was held commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hahnemann's graduation, and its Latin written programme was signed by 400 medical doctors. In the same year the Society of German Homeopathic Practitioners was founded, which is still in existence. Homeopathy and its creator were acclaimed by Goethe, Heine, Schiller, the new method found itself in the forefront of social interest. Six years after the death of his wife Henrietta, Hahnemann at the age of eighty had married thirty four years old Frenchwoman Melanie, the daughter of the Minister of Justice and the Chief of the Executive. It happened in Köthen, but before long she would take him with her to Paris. In France Hahnemann became the centre of focus of the higher society, among his patients was for instance Paganini, and many other famous personalities. He lived with Melanie in a large villa, at the front of which lined up the coaches of his patients. Hahnemann took part in his wife's soirees and he always examined his patients in her presence. He became the honorary President of the French Homeopathic Society. His annual income was 200 000 Francs in gold. Melanie also caused Hahnemann a few posthumous scandals. For example, she secretly had his body buried in a grave where already were the bodies of her two previous lovers, and through her exorbitant demands she prevented the publication of the sixth revised issue of the Organon, edited by Hahnemann himself towards the end of his life. Hahnemann's Followers Hahnemann, of course, was not the only outstanding historical personality in homeopathy. His best known direct pupil was Carl von Bönninghausen, the author of the first Repertory, or the catalogue of symptoms and the remedies that apply to them. This doctor of natural sciences was in fact the first (but certainly not the last) homeopath of note - who was not a medical doctor. As often happens he was drawn to homeopathy by his own illness. In 1827 he fell ill with tuberculosis and his condition quickly deteriorated, while under the allopathic treatment. At the last moment a friend, homeopathic practitioner, advised him of a remedy, which completely cured Bönninghausen in six months. Immediately he began to study homeopathy, to conduct experiments, and to organise the homeopathic movement. And, of course, to treat and so successfully, that the cabinet of the Emperor Frederick Wilhelm IV. issued him a permit to treat patients, without demanding the medical education and examinations. Later the Homeopathic Medical College in Cleveland conferred on him a medical degree honoris causa, and the Emperor Napoleon III. made him a Knight of the Honorary Legion. He died forty years after the successful self-treatment of the otherwise terminal disease. Following Hahnemann's departure from Germany the centre of further progress moved abroad. To Great Britain, where its main propagator was Dr. Quinn, the founder of the London Faculty of Homeopathy, an institution that to these days facilitates the organisation of homeopathic treatment and postgraduate training of medical doctors. Presently this faculty conducts its courses even in Prague, where Drs. J. M. English and R. S. Malcolm already have hundreds of pupils. Dr. Quinn also had a strange connection of fate to our country, as it was in Tisnov in Moravia, where he fell ill during the epidemic of cholera, very nearly died, and cured himself with a homeopathic remedy which he, naturally, prescribed to himself. For his help in dealing with the epidemic, he received a letter of gratitude from the Mayor of Tisnov. Homeopathic treatment, also through the medium of Dr. Quinn, soon gained favour among the members of the British Royal family, and it remained so ever since. German doctors, like the immigrant Adolph von Lippe, a professor at the College of Homeopathy of Pennsylvania, an organiser and author of the speciality literature, contributed to the transit of homeopathy to the United States. Homeopathy soon became established at universities and gained mass recognition. To the present time the Materia Medicas by the American homeopath E. A. Farrington are being studied. Constantin Hering largely contributed to the advancement of methods of the treatment - the laws of developing reactions to the homeopathic remedies, which bear his name, form the spine of the treatment. He also discovered some very important remedies, of which the leading one is Lachesis Mutus, the poison of a snake from Dutch Guyana. The enthusiasm of the early researchers, bordering on self sacrifice, is well illustrated by the story of the discovery of Lachesis. Hering with his wife travelled in the South American jungle, to look for more vegetable and animal substances, which could be tested and used as remedies. The Indians told him about a snake, the very name of which (they called it sururuku), terrified them. They maintained that even its breath was lethal. As soon as it was seen, they would run away from the place in panic, because its bite, with two needle-like thin and long fangs, was followed by quick, painful and inevitable death. It took Hering a lot of convincing before he could persuade a few natives to help him trap the snake. He took its poison and began to dilute it. Even then, the signs of an acute toxic reaction started to overwhelm him, this lasted for several hours. Before losing consciousness, he instructed his wife to continue taking notes of everything that happened to him, of all his reactions, of any changes in his condition. The record of these changes then entered the Materia Medicas and helped to cure millions of people. On all continents, Lachesis turned out to be one of the most useful homeopathic remedies. It is recorded in the literature that among the strongest symptoms that Hering had experienced after taking the remedy, was an unpleasant feeling of tightness and sensitivity around the neck. This symptom, however, was before felt and recognised by Hering who never liked wearing tight collars. As it is one of the so called key symptoms (those exclusively characterising a remedy) of Lachesis, it is probable that Hering, under these dramatic circumstances, had discovered his own constitutional remedy. The greatest American homeopath of the turn of the century was James Tyler Kent, considered to be the founder of modern homeopathy. He was initially an orthodox practitioner. His wife fell ill and neither his colleagues nor himself were able to help her with the orthodox medication. It was a homeopath who finally cured her, and Kent turned immediately to this new direction. Kent's great synthetic work was the creation of the Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica, to these days the most widely used tool of diagnosis in the homeopathic practice. He is the author of the Materia Medica where as the first author he treats the remedies as separate entities, with their recognisable curative characteristics, thus making it easier to find the correct remedy. His Lectures on the Homeopathic Treatment describe the ideal of homeopathic treatment, as determined and practised at the time of the greatest advance of homeopathy at the beginning of 20th Century, when in some American towns there was a predominance of homeopathic practitioners. The centre of this colossal movement were educational institutions such as the Postgraduate School of Homeopathy in Philadelphia, with Kent as a Dean, or Dunham Medical College in Chicago, where he was active as a professor of the Materia Medica. The central role played by Kent enabled him to gather the enormous number of facts for his Repertory. They originated not only from his own research and practice, but from a large number of practitioners who collaborated with the above named institutions. At the beginning of this century a monumental shrine devoted to Hahnemann was unveiled in Washington, with a gigantic statue of the founder of the movement and a number of relieves, depicting the significant events of his creative life.
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents] © Jiri Cehovsky, 1994 |
poslední aktualizace: 30.08.2006 |
||