© Centre For Excellence In Homeopathy
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Books and pamphlets were fulminated against him.
The reviews were so virulent that even the better of
HAHNEMANN’s enemies condemned them. He
was called a charlatan, a quack, an ignormus. In
1811, his son published a refutation, which it is
believed HAHNEMANN himself wrote. All this
storm of abuse he answered in no other way. He
gave his answer in a better way, in 1811, when he
presented to the world the first volume of the
“Materia Medica Pura”.
But the grand impulse was strong within him.
He felt that he must find a wider platform from
which to shout his glad tidings to sick and suffering
humanity, and in the year 1811, he transferred his
“Lares and Penates” to his old home in Leipsic, the
place he had first entered as an enthusiastic and
scholarly lad of twenty. Since then – Vienna,
Hermanstadt, Erlangen, Dessau, Gommern,
Dresden, Georgenthal, the wander years, and
afterwards Torgau, with its literary results. Trials,
malevolence, privation, and false accusation, all
had followed him like furies, and yet impelled by a
strange force, the genius of right and justice, he had
ever and steadily gone on towards the future of
whose brightness even yet he did not know.
It now became impressed upon
HAHNEMANN’s mind that he must teach this
Doctrine of Medicine publicly to men; and he went
to Leipsic and began to lecture on the principles of
Homeopathy. In December 1811, he inserted a
notice of his “Medical Institute” in a journal of the
city. But before he was permitted to lecture he was
compelled to defend a thesis before the Faculty of
Medicine. This he did on June 26, 1812. Its title
was “A Dissertation on the Helleborism of the
Ancients,” and it was such a marvel of erudition
that no one attempted to dispute it. In its pages
containing quotations from the Hebrew, Latin,
Greek, Arabic, Italian, French, English and German
there was evidence of profound knowledge. It
seemed an echo from the great libraries of
Hermanstadt and Dresden.
HAHNEMANN now began lecturing
Wednesday and Saturday afternoons from 2 to 3
o’clock. The lectures were continued seminally
during his entire stay at Leipsic, and soon attracted
hearers from the medical and law students and the
younger of the Leipsic physicians. The fame of his
learning and desire to see the man who taught such
medical “heresies” attracted many to him. Soon
from the audiences he gathered a circle of young
men under his direction who began to make
provings on themselves. The result was the
“Materia Medica Pura”. These faithful disciples
lived near HAHNEMANN’s house and were
almost constantly with him. Each had his duty to
perform, and HAHNEMANN, after collecting the
symptoms, verified them, subjecting them to the
finest scrutiny and with the most scrupulous
exactitude analyzed them. The plants were
collected, the preparations according to the formula
of the master were made, and results noted. They
who sat at the feet of the teacher, afterwards carried
the new doctrine into many places. Fortunately, the
story has been told by some among the number so
that it is known how the reformer lived at this time.
He was fully occupied with his lectures and the
receptions of his patients at his home. He did not
visit them at their houses. Daily with his wife and
daughters he walked in one of the public gardens of
the city. After the day’s labour he was accustomed
to sit among his students in the evening, and with
the mug of “ghose” at his side and the long German
pipe in his hand, he would tell his disciples of the
curious actions and ways of the older physicians at
the sick bed, or relate circumstances of his former
life; and then he would become lost to the
surroundings, his pipe would go out, and one of his
daughters would at once be called to relight it.
But persecution came. The students were
accustomed to prescribe for patients and
HAHNEMANN’s reception room was thronged
daily; both master and students gave medicine.
This practice was contrary to the law of that time,
and the apothecaries whose privileges were
supposed to be encroached upon appealed to the
courts against HAHNEMANN, and he was cited to
appear. He did so, and also addressed a letter to the
authorities in which he argued that he did not give
compound prescriptions but only simple remedies
in such minute doses, and of whose preparation the
apothecaries knew nothing, that they could not put
up these medicines; that their exclusive right was
only to make up compound prescriptions and that
Homeopathy did not compound or dispense. He
was soon notified that he would be fined twenty
thalers for every dispensation afterwards.
In 1820 a celebrated general Prince von
SCHWARZENBERG, who had been a leader of
the allied armies against Napoleon, applied to
HAHNEMANN for treatment, asking that he attend
him at Vienna. HAHNEMANN replied that if he
wished his services he must come to Leipsic as he
was too busy to go to Vienna. So desirous was the
Prince to consult HAHNEMANN that he came to
Leipsic and established himself in a suburb of the
city. His case was incurable, and he died about six
months afterwards of Apoplexy. His death was the
cause of renewed attacks on HAHNEMANN, and
the legal persecutions, that during the treatment had
been prevented by Saxon government on account of
his illustrious patient, were resumed with redoubled