The responsible for all this commotion
is Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, a German Physician who rebelled against the
Medicine en vogue some 200 years ago.
Homeopathy is his brainchild.
Dr. Hahnemann was born in 1755 in Meissen, Saxony, at a time when
the practice of Medicine was limited to bleeding, purging,
blistering and creating accumulations of pus to then drain it. The
purpose behind these therapeutic abominations was "to purify the
organism" in order to make it healthy.
Dr. Hahnemann's given names were Christian Friedrich Samuel. He was
called Samuel to avoid confusion, because his father's first name
was also Christian.
Young Samuel was a frail child. He loved to study. He
graduated as a Medical Doctor in 1779, at age 24. By that time, Dr.
Hahnemann was also an accomplished chemist and fluent in several
languages.
He quitted the practice of Medicine shortly after graduating. He
couldn't bring himself to needlessly mortify his patients. Ever
since, and until he created Homeopathy, Dr. Hahnemann earned his
keep as a translator.
Dr. Hahnemann was endowed with incorruptible moral and professional
principles and many other talents and virtues. Unfortunately,
professional tact was not his forte. With his colleagues, he was as
diplomatic as a grizzly bear recently roused from hibernation. His
acerbic and biting criticisms of the atrocious Medicine practiced in
his time and of its practitioners and followers never failed to stir
up the wrath of his peers, who expelled him from town after town.
In one of those many towns he was allowed to stay long enough to
meet and fall in love with Henriette Küchler, the 17 year old
daughter of a local pharmacist. Henriette became Dr. Hahnemann's
wife and staunch companion in the very difficult years ahead, and
bore him several children.
Dr. Hahnemann's family life was sad, difficult and trying. He was
haunted by poverty, constantly roaming from town to town. He had to
work all hours to make ends meet. His eldest son lost his mind, his
second daughter died in a coach accident as a baby, and 2 other
daughters were killed. His wife Henriette died when Dr. Hahnemann
was 75 years old.
Dr. Hahnemann was a prolific writer, as well as a keen self made Medical Researcher. Above all, he was a compassionate Physician. Since his graduation until 1835, the year when he semi retired, Dr. Hahnemann's literary production can only be described as colossal. After repudiating Allopathic Medicine, Dr. Hahnemann created and started the practice of Homeopathy and also wrote many books and essays, among them his Organon, his Materia Medica, and his Treatise of Chronic Diseases.
|
|
|
