Samuel Hahnemann, Founder of Homeopathy

by Heidi Stevenson

Homeopathy's founder, Samuel Hahnemann, was born on 10 or 11 April 1755 in Meissen, Saxony (now part of Germany) into a family of artists, painters and porcelain designers. His proficiency in languages became apparent early in life. By age 20, he was fluent in English, French, Italian, Greek, Latin, and of course, his native Geman. He later learned four middle eastern languages, Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Syriac.

In spite of his father's opposition, Hahnemann was a consummate student. Destitute, he supported himself through college by tutoring French and German, and translating books from English to German. He pursued his initial university education in Leipzig. Though he'd been given free tuition, he left because the school lacked a clinical program for medicine. He then moved to Vienna, where he was allowed to attend lectures for free, though he continued to use his language skills to support himself.

After graduation in 1779, Hahnemann moved to Mansfeld, Saxony, where he took a position as the town physician. He married Johanna Küchler, and they had 11 children. He practiced the medicine of his time for only five years, and later explained his reasons for leaving with the following words:

Hahnemann was utterly disgusted with the medicine of his day, which included blood letting, purgatives, and a variety of other so-called "heroic" measures, which generally meant techniques that were painful and, as likely as not, led to death. He wrote books on chemistry and toxicology. In one, he wrote about arsenic poisoning, which is still referred to as authoritative, and he returned to his translation skills.

In 1789, Hahnemann translated a text by William Cullen, a renowned Scottish physician, which claimed that Peruvian bark was effective in treating malaria because of its astringent nature and bitterness. Because many other substances with the same qualities have no beneficial effect on malaria, Hahnemann was doubtful about that explanation. So, he proceeded to experiment on himself with Peruvian bark extract and found that relatively large doses of it produced the same symptoms that small doses cure in malaria.

This was Hahnemann's Eureka! moment, when he struck upon the concept of homeopathy's primary principle: Similia similibus curentur, like cures like. He devised the methodology's name from two Greek words: Omoios, meaning similar, for homeo- and pathos, meaning suffering, for -pathy. Thus, the term homeopathy was born.

Hahnemann proceeded to test other substances on himself, family, and friends. He didn't choose them randomly, but according to information gleaned from his vast knowledge of chemistry and botany. This developed into homeopathy's first materia medica, a compilation of the known actions of medically-useful substances.

Samuel Hahnemann was ahead of his time. In 1796, he published an article outlining his views on what the medical practitioner's goal should be, indicating that there are only three approaches possible. This first, which he called "sublime", is to remove the the cause of disease, an ideal only rarely obtainable. The second is treatment by opposites, such as laxatives for constipation. This he called ony palliative. The third is treatment by similars, like cures like. This he considered to be the only method of value. In this article, he also suggested that health was directly associated with factors almost completely ignored by the medical establishment of his time: diet, hygiene, and exercise.

Hahnemann's modernity extended to treatment of the insane. In his time, psychotics and other mentally ill people were treated brutally—chained, whipped, teased for amusement, crowded in prisons with inadequate food—and feared as being contagious, so avoided by physicians. Instead, he believed in treating them with kindness. He was asked by Duke Ernst of Gotha to care for a secretary of the chancery), Klockenbring, who was suffering from psychosis of the sort that modern medicine treats only with powerful suppressive drugs with severe and dangerous "side effects". Over a perod of seven months of compassionate treatment and homeopathic remedies, the author regained his sanity.

After Klockenbring's death several years later, Hahnemann described his behavior during the insanity, along with how he believed such insane people should be treated:

Such was Hahnemann's approach and how he exhorted other physicians to treat all patients: with respect and kindness.

Hahnemann was consistently attacked for his ideas during his life, but the most significant were from apothecaries, the equivalent of pharmacists today, who were paid according to the quantities of drugs they provided. The infinitesimal doses that Hahnemann prescribed, along with the exacting methods by which he insisted they be made, could not provide apothecaries a living wage according to the manner in which they charged. So they launched a crusade against him and his methods.

After successfully treating people in a typhus epidemic in 1913,the apothecaries attacked him for illegally dispensing his own medicines. The Leipzig city council forced him to stop. He was then able to practice only in the duchie of Duke Ferdinand of Anhalt-Köthen, who had been his patient.

For most of his life, Hahnemann was hounded and barely able to survive. Nonetheless, his determination and perserverence caused him to forever pursue knowledge, to increase the store of information in the homeopathic materia medica, to treat patients, and to pursue new ideas in medicine.

Johanna, Hahnemann's beloved wife, died in 1830 after more than 50 years of marriage. By this time, people from many countries were seeing him for treatment and many doctors went to him for training in homeopathy. Then, in 1834, a wealthy aristocratic Parisian woman in her 30's visited, and they were soon married. She took him back to Paris, where they set up a practice in her home and he continued developing homeopathy. In 1843, he died at the age of 88.

Hahnemann's life was an example to all homeopaths of his day and those who have come since. He was a beacon of integrity, as demonstrated by abandoning his medical practice on realizing it was harmful to people. His industriousness produced a hundred homeopathic remedies, 70 published documents in chemistry and medicine, 24 translated works, and homeopathy, the most significant system of healing the world has known. His humbleness showed in a comment written to Dr. Johann Ernst Stapf, "Be as sparing as possible with your praises. I do not like them, I feel that I a only an honest, straightforward man who does not more than his duty."