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Samuel Christian Hahnemann

© Christine Wyndham-Thomas

Until recently, I regarded as truth historical facts quoted in books. It never occurred to me that such so-called facts could be flawed but, sadly, such is sometimes the case - and so it is with Homeopathy.

Anthony Campbell - a Fellow of the Faculty of Homeopathy, and for 21 years a Consultant Physician at The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, plus a past Editor of the British Homeopathic Journal - has done a thorough research on this issue. It is with his permission and after carrying out much research myself that I write, in brief, about Hahnemann's life.

On the 10th/11th April 1755 Samuel Christian Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Southeast Germany. The confusion in date arising as a result of him being born very close to the midnight hour: the church records show the date as the 11th; Hahnemann maintains it was the 10th!

He entered the University of Leipzig at age 20, but a year later, in 1776, he departed for Vienna to take up post as Librarian and Family Physician to the Governor of Transylvannia, Baron von Brukenthal, at Hermannstadt. He stayed with the Baron until 1779, when he left to complete his medical education at the University of Erlangen, where he was awarded his Doctorate in Medicine in August 1779.

In 1782 he married Johanna Kuchler, an apothecary's daughter. A year later their first child, a girl, was born. The family, unfortunately, was troubled by tragedy: their two daughters were found dead in suspicious circumstances, and three were divorced, while the elder son, Friedrich, seems to have been half-mad. Hahnemann's only other son died as an infant in 1799 when the coach in which they were travelling overturned.

In 1790, while translating the Materia Medica of Dr Cullen, a Scottish Physician, he read about the Peruvian bark cinchona (quinine) being used to treat Malaria. He wondered why it was that much more astringent substance than cinchona did not cure the fever. He experimented on taking the substance over a period of time and it is said that according to Hahnemann he developed the symptoms of Malaria.

In 1805, Hahnemann moved to Tongau, on the Elbe where he wrote numerous articles, the most important of which was `The Medicine of Experience', which came out in 1806 and was the forerunner of his definitive theoretical work, The Organon. And in 1810 Hahnemann published the first edition of `The Organon of Rational Healing' (later retitled `The Organon of the Healing Art). In 1811 Hahnemann moved back to Leipzig.