Samuel Hahnemann, born on 10 April 1755, in Meissen, Saxony [now in
Germany], was a German physician, founder of the system of therapeutics known
as homeopathy.
Hahnemann studied medicine at Leipzig and Vienna, taking the degree
of M.D. at Erlangen in 1779. After practicing in various places, he settled
in Dresden in 1784 and then moved to Leipzig in 1789. In the following
year, while translating William Cullen’s Lectures on the Materia medica into
German, he was struck by the fact that the symptoms produced by quinine on the
healthy body were similar to those of the disordered states that quinine was
used to cure. This observation led him to assert the theory that “likes are
cured by likes,” similia similibus curantur; i.e., diseases are
cured (or should be treated) by those drugs that produce in healthy persons
symptoms similar to the diseases. He promulgated his principle in a paper
published in 1796; and, four years later, convinced that drugs in small doses
effectively exerted their curative powers, he advanced his doctrine of their
“potentization of dynamization.” His chief work, Organon der
rationellen Heilkunst (1810; “Organon of Rational Medicine”), contains
an exposition of his system, which he called Homöopathie, or
homeopathy. His Reine
Arzneimittellehre, 6 vol. (1811; “Pure Pharmacology”),
detailed the symptoms produced by “proving” a large number of drugs—i.e., by
systematically administering them to healthy subjects.
In 1821 the hostility of apothecaries
forced him to leave Leipzig, and at the invitation of the grand duke of Anhalt-Köthen he went to live at Köthen. Fourteen years later
he moved to Paris, where he practiced medicine with great popularity until his
death.
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