It may be safely asserted without fear of contradiction, that very often great men though self-illuminated, are valued, appreciated and remembered better and longer, not during their life time, but after their mortal remains are reduced to dust. As can be inferred from the heading of the article, the hero of todays subject is Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. He was the father of Homoeopathy, and the greatest peaceful revolutionary in the medical world of the time.
As it happens with every revolutionary, he had to undergo a life of great persecution, privation, poverty and derision, at the hands of the then existing medical fraternity over the whole of Europe, and particularly Germany, the land of his birth. And all this for the sake of doing good to humanity by his new method of healing the sick. Brevity of space demands that only the salient features of the life of this great man be dwelt upon, so that every one interested in him, his principles, and the great good he did to humanity, may be able to get a clear idea thereof.
Samuel Hahnemann was born on the 10th of April 1755 at Meissen, then famous for artistic industry in china and porcelain products. Samuels father was himself a well known designing artist and the author of a pamphlet on Water Colours and water paintings on china and porcelain.
The life of Samuel Hahnemann–one of the greatest of the great men of the world–can be divided into five periods. (1) The childhood and the school days from 1755 to 1792. (2) The trial and wandering years from 1792 to 1811. (3) The years of lifes battle in Leipsic from 1811 to 1821. (4) The master years of active and peaceful life at Coethen from 1821 to 1835. (5) The last but extremely prosperous years of Fame, Opulence and Happiness from 1835 to 1843 culminating in his peaceful and glorious end on the 2nd of July 1843.
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL DAYS. (1755-1792).
Gottfried Hahnemann, the father of our illustrious hero, was as has already been mentioned a designer and a painter in the china porcelain factory at Meissen. He taught his second son Samuel to read and write only at home. In addition he gave him home education of a type that played a very great part in forming the character of this boy, who was destined to be one of the greatest men of the world. He (Gottfried) imbibed into his young mind very sound ideas of what is good and what is bad. He further taught him to be always God-fearing and just to all those with whom he would come in contact in his whole life.
To speak in the fathers own words “He often gave him lessons in thinking.” He always impressed upon the son the rule Never to be a passive listener or learner. With such moral and mental training at home Samuel entered the local public school for his primary study. There is nothing particularly noteworthy of the public school days of Samuel. At the age of 16 he entered a private school in Meissen and studied there for four years. Here he became the favourite of Master Muller, a teacher in Oriental languages and German composition.
Master Muller was so impressed with the genius of this boy, that he often asked him to give lessons to his class boys, in the rudiments of Greek language. Samuel did this job so well that his expositions and meanings were often preferred by his master to his own. He gave him many facilities to do his home lessons according to his own convenience. Gottfried, the father of Samuel, having very slender means, did not want his son to continue at the school, but he instead a business man, and thus help his father financially.
He therefore removed him more than once from school. But, Master Muller insisted that education of the boy continued without any fees at the school. While learning under Master Muller, Samuel faithfully followed his fathers advice of reading little but digesting it well. Samuel therefore was not always upto the mark in his class studies. Master Muller convinced of the boys genius and potential abilities to be a great man of the future, excused him for all this and loved him as dearly as if were his own son.
In the school life of Samuel, his father and Master Muller played a very important part in forming his character, as is very gratefully admitted by Dr. Hahnemann in his autobiography. At the age of twenty our hero left the school and went to Leipsic University for further studies with only twenty thalers in his pocket.
Samuel had a great attraction for natural sciences, languages and the art of medicine. While studying at Leipsic he had to depend upon his own resources for maintenance, obviously due to his fathers inability to give him necessary monetary help. And he did so by accepting a tuition to a noble lady and doing translation of English books. Samuel had decided in his mind to stay at Leipsic for a period of two years, and with the money he would be able to save, to go to Vienna for his medical education, there being no medical school at Leipsic.
After a stay of well nigh two years in Leipsic, he left for Vienna at his own expenses. Here he studied his favourite subject medicine at the hospital of Brothers of Charity under the able care of Dr. Quarin. Samuels keen intellect and genius soon came to the notice of this master. He was so much pleased with his pupil, that he not only loved him very tenderly, but taught and respected him as his first favourite pupil, and this with no expectation of any renumeration whatever. He even took him to see his private patients.
Shortly after Samuels arrival in Vienna, however, due to a very malicious trick played on him, he lost much of his hard earned money, with the result that he was not able to continue his studies in Vienna for more than nine months. He therefore left the place very reluctantly. He expressed his position to his benefactor, Dr. Quarin thus:–“My last crumbs of comfort are just about to be over.” Dr. Quarin however came to his help at this time and secured for him the position of a family physician and librarian to the Baron Von Bruckenthal staying at Hermanstadt.
About the close of the year 1777 Hahnemann went to Hermanstadt. Here he spent the greater portion of his time in the valuable library of his patron and acquired that extensive and diverse knowledge of ancient literature and occult sciences of which he afterwards proved himself to be a master and with which he later astonished the scientific world.
He also learned several languages and must have given much time to philology. When he left Hermanstadt, he was a master of eight languages. He remained under the protection of the Baron for one year and nine months and in the spring of 1779 bade a reluctant good bye to the place to go Erlangen, to get a degree in medicine from the University.
At Erlangen he attended the lectures of Delius and others. He expresses himself greatly indebted to Schreber for instruction in botany. He successfully defined his thesis on “A consideration of the etiology and therapeutics of Spasmodic Affections”, on the 10 of August 1779 and received his degree of Doctor of Medicine.
After he received his degree his first thought was to get back to Saxony and accordingly he proceeded to the little town of Hettstadt and devoted himself to the study of copper mining. This must be in the summer of 1780. The time between his graduation and his going over to Hettstadt was very probably spent, it appears, in the marshy districts of lower Hungary, as can be inferred from Hahnemanns footnote on page 114, vol. 2 of translation of Cullens Materia by himself, in reference to the intermittent fevers of marshy countries.
At Hettstadt Hahnemann found it impossible, to use his own words, “to develop inwardly and outwardly.” He therefore left the place, after a stay of nine months, in the spring time of 1781, and removed to Dessau Here he engaged himself in studies in chemistry, mining and smelting. Towards the close of 1781, however, he got an insignificant appointment of Parish Doctor in Gommern and removed there to take up the same.
Soon after he settled as parish doctor in Gommern he married in 1782, his first life-partner, the step daughter of apothecary Haseler. He remained at Gommern till the fall of 1784 and then went to Dresden.
Soon after settling in the position of the parish doctor, our young doctor took to his favourite literary pursuits At Gommern he translated from French the chemist Demachys Art of Manufacturing Chemical Products. Crell, in his Annalen affirms that no more complete treatise exists on the subject of manufacture of chemical substances than this work . This valuable book was published in two volumes at Leipsic in 1784. In 1785 Hahnemann published also in Leipsic a translation of Demachys Art of distilling liquor.
He also published some medical essays in Krebs journal and also wrote an original book on the treatment of scrofulous sores, published in Leipsic in 1784. Even at this early period our young doctor was not quite satisfied with the then existing methods of medical practice.
He says in this book–“This much is true and it may make us more modest, that almost all our knowledge of the curative powers of simple and natural as well as artificial substances is mainly derived from the rude and automatic (mechanical) procedures of the common people and that the wise physician draws conclusions from the effects of the so called domestic remedies which are of inestimable importance to him.” The book was largely the result of experiences of his in Transylvania and he frankly admits that his patients would probably have done better without him. This book was received with much praise by the profession.
