Samuel Hahnemann, who
passed away on 2 July 1843, in Paris, France, aged 88, 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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