Part 4

In the picturesque town of Meissen, in the district of Cur Saxony, lived an honest and worthy man, Christian Gottfried Hahnemann, an intelligent, patriotic and highly esteemed, though unassuming and unambitious member of that community, by trade a painter upon porcelain, known under the name of Dresden-China.

On the 10th day of April, 1755, he was made happy by the birth of a son, whom he named Samuel Christian Frederick. Amidst all the fond hopes the parents cherished for their new-born babe, little did they imagine to what a destiny the great Creator had appointed him. Of the mother of this child not very much is known, save that she was modest, industrious, intensely attached to her family, full of sympathy with her children's aspirations, and ever-ready to aid them in their schemes of pleasure or advancement. The infantile years of little Hahnemann were spent amidst scenery so strikingly beautiful, as to impress his young buoyant heart, even in those tender years, with an admiration of Nature's handiwork, and so instill into him a love of the works of God, which ever increased as he grew older. He was not sent to school very young, not until he was eight years old; this will perhaps partly account for the fact that when he did go, he manifested an ardent thirst for knowledge, which was never slacked during his long life-time. But he did not spend his first eight years of life entirely in play. Those health-securing, physical-exhilarating and developing exercises were occasionally relieved by lessons from his father, and sometimes from his mother, in reading and writing, and by frequent conversations of a religious and moral character.

These conversations laid deep the foundation of that undeviating integrity, fixedness of purpose, unwavering conscientiousness and unaffected reverence for the Divine Being, which ever characterized this Medical Reformer in after life. The influence of this paternal conversational instruction and moral training made him what he was, as a school-boy, as a college-student, as an author, a chemist and a physician. Untiring industry, conscientiousness, and a reliance upon Divine blessing, will in any sphere in life secure success, and Samuel Hahnemann was no exception to the general rule. In writing on this subject, he says: "My father had the soundest ideas on what was to be considered good and worthy in man, and had arrived at them by his own independent thought. He sought to plant them in me, and impressed on me more by actions than by words, the great lesson of life, to act and to be, not merely to seem! When a good work was going forward, there, often unobserved, he was sure to be helping, hand to heart; shall I not do likewise? In the finest distinctions between the noble and the base, he decided by his actions with a justness that did honor to the nicety of his sense of right and wrong. In this, too, he was my monitor."

Such sterling qualities, rooted in the boy's heart, and early budding out in his life, made him beloved by all who came in contact with him. Play-mates, school-fellows and instructors not only treated him with kindness, but with ardent affection.

This school-boy life did not pass, however, without trials, the greatest of which was the disinclination of his father for him to continue his studies. It is a little strange that the good man, who himself possessed a keen power of observation, did not once suspect the future greatness of his child: but he was very poor, had several other children to support, and doubtless feared that a thorough classical and scientific education would give to his son aspirations that would be doomed to bitter disappointment. His teacher, however, pleaded on his behalf, offering to remit the usual school-fees, and he was permitted to continue his studies until he was twenty years of age. A proof of the poverty of his parents at this time, is illustrated by the circumstance, that his father complained of the great consumption of oil during young Hahnemann's preparation of his lessons, and would not permit him to use the family lamp after the other members of the household had retired: but Samuel, who was never daunted by difficulties, or frustrated in a purpose, when he had concluded that it was legitimate, manufactured a lamp out of a lump of clay, and successfully coaxed his mother to supply him with oil.

At the close of his high school term, young Hahnemann wrote, as was usual with those just finishing their course, a treatise. He had for some time manifested a deep interest in natural science, and particularly in the branches of chemistry and physiology. He wrote his thesis in Latin, choosing as his subject, "The wisdom of God in forming the Human Hand." This was for his age, a work of great merit, and even his father seemed to have become proud of his abilities, and gave his free consent for the studious boy to go to Leipzig that he might attend the lectures at the University, and presented him with all the money he possibly could spare, amounting to nearly fifteen dollars in our currency. "This," says Hahnemann, "was the last money I received from my father." He left his home for Leipzig on Easter, 1775.

He was at first somewhat puzzled by that troublesome subject, "the ways and means," but fortunately becoming acquainted with two rich Princes of Greece, who were anxious to be instructed in the English and French languages. Hahnemann entered into a lucrative engagement with them as instructor, and also obtained employment as a translator of medical and philosophical works. The remuneration he received for private teaching and translating, not only enabled him to supply all his moderate wants and purchase of books, but he saved a considerable amount besides. In order to save so much, and at the same time attend faithfully upon all his classes, he denied himself sleep every other night. In 1777, we find him attending the hospitals of Vienna where his excellence of character, and extent of medical information, completely won him the friendship and confidence of the celebrated Doctor von Quarin, who perceiving the noble qualities and promising abilities of the young man, adopted him as a special protégé. Hahnemann says of him, "To him I owe my claims to be reckoned as a physician. I had his love and friendship." After this, he visited the University of Erlangen, where he graduated, receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine on the 10th of August, 1779. At this time, an earnest longing for the air of Saxony and the scenery of his native district seems to have taken possession of him. After having occupied several prominent positions, the government offered him the office of District Physician in Gommern, which he accepted in 1782.

After three years residence in Gommern, during which time he had married, he became tired of professional idleness--as he expresses himself--and we find him removing to Dresden. For about a year he occupied the position as superintendent of the public hospitals of that city. His conscience however, began to be much troubled by the conviction that medicine as then practiced proved worse than useless to the majority of patients. He retired from the practice of medicine in disgust at its uncertainties, occupying himself solely with chemistry and literary labor.

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The humanity and integrity of Hahnemann is plainly portrayed in a letter to the venerable Hufeland, where he gives his own account of the reasons which induced him at this time to retire from practice. He writes:

"It was painful for me to grope in the dark, guided only by our books in the treatment of the sick--to prescribe according to this or that fanciful view of the nature of diseases, substances that only owed to mere opinion their place in the Materia Medica. I had conscientious scruples about treating unknown morbid states in my suffering fellow-creatures with these unknown medicines; which, being powerful substances, might, if they were not exactly suitable, (and how could the physician know whether they were suitable or not, seeing that their peculiar special actions were not yet elucidated?), easily change life into death, or produce new affections or chronic ailments, which are often much more difficult to remove than the original disease. To become in this way a murderer, or an aggravator of the sufferings of mankind, was to me a fearful thought. So fearful and distressing was it, that shortly after my marriage I abandoned the practice, and scarcely treated any one for fear of doing him harm."

In 1789, he settled in Leipzig, and numerous writings and translations, which have been often quoted by the best writers ever since, came from his pen during that period. We come now to the year 1790, in which the first thought of Homopathy issued from the brain of the great father and founder of the new school of medicine. It has already been hinted that Hahnemann had felt an intense desire to obtain some clear, safe and philosophical guide to the therapeutic action of drugs.

He was called upon to translate "Cullen's Materia Medica," and as he progressed in the description of one medical substance after another, he could not but feel a renewal of the earnest longing he had so often cherished, to clear medical science from the clouds of mist and uncertainty in which it had continued from the time of Hippocrates.

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The workings of his mind, and the character of the man, at this time will be best understood by a quotation from the letter he wrote to Hufeland, where he says:

"Having briefly reviewed, the sad experience of the systems of Sydenham and Hoffmann, of Boerhave and Glaubius, of Stahl, Cullen and de Hean," he continues,

"But it is, perhaps, the very nature of this art, as great men have asserted that it is incapable of attaining any greater certainty. Shameful, blasphemous thought! What! shall it be said that the infinite wisdom of the Eternal Spirit, that animates the universe, could not produce remedies to allay the sufferings of the diseases He allows to arise? The all-loving paternal goodness of Him, whom no name worthily designates, who richly supplies all wants, even the scarcely conceivable wants of the insect in the dust, imperceptible by reason of its minuteness to the keenest human eye, and who despenses throughout creation, life and happiness in rich abundance, shall it be said that He is capable of the tyranny of not permitting that man, made in his image, should by the efforts of his penetrating mind, that has been breathed into him from above, find out the way to discover remedies in the stupendous kingdom of creation, which should be able to deliver mankind from their sufferings, worse than death itself? Shall He, the Father of all, behold with indifference the martyrdom of his best-beloved creatures by disease, and yet render it impossible to the genius of man, to whom all else is possible, to find any method, any easy, sure, trust-worthy method, whereby they may see diseases from their proper point of view, and whereby they may interrogate medicines as to their special uses, as to what they are really, surely and positively serviceable for? Well, thought I, as there must be a sure and trust-worthy method of treatment, as certainly as God is the wisest and most beneficient of Beings, I shall seek it no longer in the thorny thicket of ontological explanations,... nor in the authoritative declarations of celebrated men. No; let me seek it where it lies nearest at hand, and where it has hitherto been passed over by all, because it did not seem sufficiently recondite, nor sufficiently learned, and was not hung with laurels for those who displayed most talent for constructing systems, for scholastic speculation, and transcendental abstractions."

With these high and noble feelings, his mind was fully awake to any suggestion that might be derived from the material before him.

For forty years he carried on a series of well-planned and well-calculated experiments to ascertain the disease-producing power of drugs, when administered to persons in health. Friends, medical and lay, were brought into requisition, and all possible means taken to secure the greatest accuracy; for Hahnemann already began to feel that he was God's agent of mercy, through whose happy discovery and labors future generations would be greatly blessed.

He found but little opportunity to test his newly-discovered law of cure while he remained in Leipzig, and poverty compelled him to labor with his pen most indefatigably, as was evidenced by the large number of essays and translations published at that time.

Providence, however, interfered in his behalf; the reigning Duke of Saxe Gotha offered him the position of Physician to the Asylum for the Insane in Georgenthal, in the Thuringen Forest. He entered upon his duties in 1792. While at the head of this establishment, he succeeded in affecting a cure which created some sensation, because the party concerned was the Hanoverian Minister, Klockenbring, who was rendered insane by a lampoon written by Kotzebue. He also introduced a mild and humane treatment for the insane, removing the chains and tight-jacket, heretofore in use.

In 1810, he published his greatest work, "The Organon," which ran through five editions, and was translated into most all the living languages. From 1810 to 1821, we find him again in Leipzig, publishing his Materia Medica, and lecturing twice a week in the University, at the same time attending to a multitude of patients.

In 1821, Hahnemann was induced by the reigning Duke of Anhalt-Coethen, who was his warm friend and admirer, to change his place of residence, and appointed him his Physician. He accepted the position. He soon began to work as earnestly as before in proving medicines and prescribing for his patients, who came from all parts of Europe.

On one occasion, during his residence in Coethen, he recieved a visitor who had heard a great deal of Hahnemann and his garden, and who had imagined the garden to be as large as its owner was great. When he was ushered into the presence of the Prophet of Medicine and found him seated at a table in a summer-house, only a few yards from the dwelling, he exclaimed: "But where is the garden?" To which Hahnemann replied, "This is the garden." "Surely," rejoined the visitor, "Not this narrow patch of ground?" "True, it is very narrow and very short, but observe its infinite height," said the Sage, pointing upwards to the blue sky overhead.

The tenth of August, 1829, was a joyful day for the venerable old man, being the fifteenth anniversary of his obtaining the degree of M. D. Gratifying and memorable in more than one respect was this day for him.

I refrain from giving you a full description of this impressive celebration, lest I should be considered tedious, yet I cannot thus pass over historical facts, without dwelling upon a few of the principal features of this gratifying and memorable festivity.

The early morning found assembled a large number of the friends of Hahnemann, his disciples; deputations from various cities; also deputations from the Universities of Leipzig, Vienna and Erlangen, which presented him with the Diploma of Honor. The King of Saxony, the Duke of Saxe Gotha and many others had sent costly presents from far and near. His dwelling having been appropriately prepared for the celebration, and on a table, resembling an altar, adorned with flowers and entwined with oak leaves, was placed a well executed bust of Hahnemann.

After Hahnemann was introduced, his bust was crowned with laurels, amid appropriate addresses and congratulations. With deep emotion, the venerable old man in heartfelt and affecting words, gave thanks to the Supreme Being that he had been permitted to make so great a discovery, and was so favored with a long life, full of bodily and mental vigor.