Background information and history
Hahnemann, the father of Homeopathy, was born in Meissen, on the 10th April 1755.

Information about his early life comes from his autobiography. He practiced medicine for one year and nine months before moving to Erlangen, where he studied Botany in preparation for his degree of Doctor of Medicine in August 1779.

Between 1785 and 1789 he published more than 2,200 pages of work. Much of the work was translation; some were his own original works and essays.

He recognized the insufficiency of current medical practices and therapeutic methods. One of his works was on the effects of Arsenic poisoning, which was used as a "fever powder". Hahnemann was outspoken in his demands for the prohibition on the sale of Arsenic as a medicine. At the same time he classified several remedies which could be used as antidotes for the effects of the poisoning. He challenged the physicians of the day to explain the use of blood-letting and the use of purgatives after the death of Kaiser Leopold II. He questioned why the processes were repeated after no obvious improvements were noted. Hahnemann started to work with a variety of substances, such as coffee, arnica, ignatia bean and arsenic, methodically documenting their effects and attributes in a scientific study.

In 1792 he began the treatment of mental patients, using a method that was for those days quite radical, but commonplace now. He treated the patient with care and respect, making observations only while the patient rested. Not until he had thoroughly observed the patient did he start to administer a medicine.

He was totally dissatisfied with the old ways of teaching and practice of the medical arts and his restlessness helped to form his new ideas. He was often distracted by his mental labours, but needed to provide for his large family, which often had extra people to feed such as his mental patients, who frequently resided with him or his students.

Much of Hahnemann's advice to patients was on improving their diet and standards of hygiene. Given the unsanitary conditions of the day, he showed great forward thinking and his ideas for town planning demonstrated a wisdom that lacked at the time. He prescribed very little on the way of medicines and was particular in his prescription for clean and healthy living.

He attracted the wrath of the medical establishment after he published a booklet on the cure of Scarlet Fever for which he asked payment in advance, with the order. However his method of using the remedy Belladonna as a treatment for the disease gradually become recognized and was used for both cure and prevention, although his colleagues attacked him on the issue of the smallness of dose and dilution.

By 1796 he had formed his views and it was this year that came to be known as the birth year of Homeopathy.

In his Essay on New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs, and some Examinations of the Principles, he states there were in the past, three ways of healing.

1. Removing or destroying the original causes of the malady.

2. Healing opposites by opposites, which often caused the disease to become chronic (laxatives to relieve constipation and opiates to relieve pain) and caused further injury the longer period it is used.

3. The third way was usually by chance.

Hahnemann felt that one should rationally investigate medicines by experimenting on healthy humans and so he arrived at the foundation stone of Homeopathy, Similia Simibilus Curantur. He found that most medicines have an effect on the body of some sort and he quoted a number of medicines that he had tested.

Hahnemann wrote the Organon, his most important work, which is central to the healing art of Homeopathy. He stated publicly that he was not the discoverer of this method of healing, but that it had not yet been taught in this way. Various aspects that lay behind his precepts had been known since the time of the Greek philosophers.
He defined the role of the doctor as the sole object to make sick men well (or to cure).

His definition of healing was “a speedy, gentle and lasting restoration of health, or the removal and annihilation of the malady in its entirety in the shortest, most dependable, least harmful way".

1831 an outbreak of cholera swept through Asia and into Europe. The allopathic doctors had no cure and were powerless to prevent its spread. Hahnemann seized the moment and wrote a series of pamphlets on the cure of cholera by homeopathically prepared camphor for the first stage of the disease and copper for the later stages. He also recommended quarantine and improved sanitary conditions. It was soon demonstrated that when his recommendations were followed, a cure took place and with the documentation of many successful cures, it was demonstrated that the science of Homeopathy worked well.

In 1835 Hahnemann left for Paris, where he remarried. He had a successful practice there and died in his Paris home on 2nd July 1843 aged 88.


Further reading
A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica Volumes 1 – 3
J.H. Clarke M.D
B Jain Publishers
New Delhi. India ISBN 81 7021 013 5

Repertory of Homoeopathic Materia Medica
Dr James Tyler Kent
B Jain Publishers
New Delhi. India ISBN 81 7021 059 3

Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica
W. Boericke M.D
B Jain Publishers
New Delhi. India ISBN 81 7021 003 8

Lotus Materia Medica
Robin Murphy M.D.
Lotus Star Academy
Colorado USA ISBN 0 9635764 0 2

The Family Guide to Homeopathy
Dr Andrew Lockie
Penguin Books
London UK IISBN 0241 13041 7

Samuel Hahnemann His life & Work Vol 1 & 2
Richard Haehl M.D.
B Jain Publishers
New Delhi. India