[Born at Meissen, in Saxony, 1755. Died in Paris, 1843. Aged 88.]
He began life under good auspices. His father, a porcelain painter, an
upright and instructed man, in straitened circumstances, is said to have
been assiduous in inculcating upon him his own principles of integrity.
When, unable to support further the expenses of his education, he was
about putting him to a trade, the Meissen professors, struck by the
lad’s talents, resolved to continue his education gratuitously, and
afterwards obtained for him the same favour at Leipzig. He embarked in
his profession, and gained such distinction, that for a whole
twelvemonth, during the illness of the celebrated Wagner, all the
hospitals of Dresden were placed under his direction. His eminence
offered the fairest prospects, when he was visited by a growing distrust
of the science which he practised. He found in it no settled and
commanding principles. He saw the ablest men, groping their way between
experience and conjecture. One law, as he thought, dawned on him; that
the cure of the disease is to be effected by the same agent which, in
the healthy body, would have produced it. On this basis he
re-constructed medicine, giving to his new system the name of
“Homœopathy,” or “The Science of Like Affections.” His disciples devoted
themselves to the creation of a suitable Materia Medica, by
experimenting upon their own healthy bodies; and it is a second
discovery of Hahnemann, if a discovery, that infinitesimal doses may be
effectual in the cure of disease. The system of Hahnemann waged war to
the knife, and it met with war to the knife. As an historical point it
is worthy of remark, that Homœopathy has spread, and is spreading, its
conquests. The honesty of the founder may stand on the single plain
fact, that by denouncing and renouncing established doctrines, he
stepped down from the safe height of his profession, into hazard of the
poverty which he had tasted, and from which he had laboriously risen.
[By Rauch. The original bust is in marble, in the Library at Bremen.]
346A. SAMUEL HAHNEMANN. _Physician and Founder of Homœopathy._
[This is a colossal bust representing the homœopathist at a more
advanced age.]