THE SECRETIVE HAHNEMANN AND THE ESOTERIC ROOTS OF HOMEOPATHY
by Peter Morrell
Plato is absorbed into the realm of pure Ideas, 7 Dec 2001 - Peter Morrell
The Secretive Hahnemann and the Esoteric Roots of Homeopathy
"Not a single founder or follower of any of the medical systems could or...would dare to carry out his system faithfully and vigorously into practice, without doing the greatest injury to patients." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 497]
"In an eight years' practice, pursued with conscientious attention, I had learned the delusive nature of the ordinary methods of treatment, and from sad experience I knew right well how far the methods of Sydenham, and Frederick Hoffmann, of Boerhaave and Gaubius, of Stoll, Quarin, Cullen, and De Haan were capable of curing." [Lesser Writings, 513]
"[In 1777] he carefully catalogued Baron von Brukenthal's immense library of books and rare manuscripts. It was during the quiet, scholarly days, in the secluded library at Hermannstadt [Sibiu], that he acquired that extensive and diverse knowledge of ancient literature, and of occult sciences, of which he afterwards proved himself the master, and with which he astonished the scientific world." [Bradford, 28]
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This essay explores why Hahnemann left only scant hints about where he obtained his medical ideas and what major historical influences impinged upon his formulation of homeopathy.
To summarise Hahnemann's life in the early 1780s would be a compelling and very worthwhile task, primarily because it was undoubtedly the major turning point in his life, and from which sprang his burning desire to reform medicine and so become, like Paracelsus before him, a "medical Luther," [Temkin, 16]. Despondent is not really a word strong enough to describe how he felt at that point in time, about to abandon in disgust, as he was, the practice of medicine [Dresden, 1784 - Bradford, 36-7], which had been his life's love and ambition and into which he had poured all his energy, his life and his soul.
Yet, even this summary does not really convey the true extent of his problems. Having been trained in the medicine of the day, he had applied himself most diligently to its practice at the bedside, only to be rewarded by severe disappointment at every turn by a system that seemed to be utterly useless, unpredictable and downright harmful to patients.
How could any honest man of conscience and good moral character such as he, hold his head high and look his fellow in the eye armed only with such a desultory, damaging and inefficacious tool to treat the sick? He just could not stomach what to him amounted to a form of deceit against his fellow human beings. He was temperamentally quite unsuited to deceive his patients and 'calm their fears' when he knew full-well that most treatments on offer were useless: "...he was not more clumsy or stupid than other doctors; he simply lacked that power to shuffle off responsibility which enabled them to face every failure," [Gumpert, 43]. His conscience for those who entrusted themselves to his care "was more and more troubled," [Haehl, I, 267]. Having married in Dec 1782 [Bradford, 36] and his first child [Henriette] having been born in 1783 in Gommern [Haehl, I, 30], he could not bring himself to 'bleed and purge' his own dear children:
"But children were born to me, several children, and in course of time serious diseases occurred, which, because they afflicted and endangered the lives of my children - my flesh and blood - caused my conscience to reproach me still more loudly, that I had no means on which I could rely for affording them relief." [Lesser Writings, 512]
It is probably true to say that quite apart from concern for his growing family, Hahnemann had four great forces gestating inside him at that time, struggling for power and dominance in his thinking and comprising the main elements of his dilemma. The first force was his training in Old Physic, with which he was by now so bitterly disenchanted because of its woeful inadequacy as a medical system [Haehl, I, 22, 40; Bradford, 42].
The second force was the esoteric tradition of arcane medicine and mysticism, parts of which he had undoubtedly glimpsed in his studies in Sibiu [Hermannstadt] in 1777-9 with Baron Samuel von Brukenthal [1721-1803; http://www.homeoint.org/photo/b/brukenth.htm], the rich Patron who had saved him from ruin by paying for his last year of study to gain his MD at Erlangen, and who had initiated him into the Freemasons in October 1777 [Bradford, 27] only three days after his arrival in Transylvania [Haehl, I, 22]. Apart from acting as his physician, he also repaid his debt to Brukenthal by cataloguing his library [websites: http://www.verena.ro/brukenthal/library.htm and http://www.cimec.ro/Carte/brukenthal/biblioteca.htm - latter in Romanian] over the best part of two years.
We read in Haehl, that while in Sibiu, Hahnemann "spent most of his time arranging his patron's extensive private library," [Haehl, I, 23], which "counts about 280,000 books; the most precious collection is represented by the 386 incunabula (Thoma de Aquino, Opus praeclarum quarti Scripti, Mainz, 1469; Breviarum croaticum, 1493; Petrarca, Triomphi, 1488; Schedel's Chronicals (2,000 woodcut illustrations), Nürnberg, 1493; De mirabilibus mundi by Solinus C. Iulius, printed in Venice in 1488; Strabo's Geography, Rome, 1473; Pliniu the Older's Natural History, Venice, 1498; Boccacio's and Petrarca's works and so on)." [from the above website]
Dr Michael Neagu, in his history of homoeopathy in Rumania [Geschichte der Homöopathie in Rumänien, 1995], discusses the significance of the position Hahnemann took as cataloguist to the library of Brukenthal at Sibiu [north-west of Bucharest], because the library contains a large collection of original works by mediaeval alchemists and physicians, including, for example, the 'Medicina Spagyrica Tripartita' (1648) of Jean Pharamond Rhumelius [c1600-c1660], which Neagu describes as "a fundamental esoteric work, relying on the principle of 'similia similibus curentur'," [Neagu, 25; Dinges, 259]. This otherwise forgotten yet important aspect of influences upon the early Hahnemann, is also discussed in Haehl, 1922, [I, 11 & 21-24, & II, 9-10].
Neagu's main point is that Hahnemann could hardly have failed to be inspired by the contents of that Library and probably picked up some therapeutic ideas while there, if only unconsciously. Neagu goes on to add that one of Hahnemann's direct disciples, Honigberger [1794-1869], "was a speaker of the Rumanian language and had practised homoeopathy in all three Romanian principiates," [Neagu, 25]. Although this does not conclusively prove that Hahnemann read these works, had any interest in them or obtained ideas from them, yet it does match other aspects about him, as explored here, touching as it does upon an unresolved problem about the origins of homoeopathy, which Hahnemann himself was consistently unwilling to discuss.
The third force that pushed him on was undoubtedly science and experimentation, with which, as a means of proof and to dispel superstition, he was deeply enchanted. Having a strong experimental bent himself and a yearning to dabble in chemistry, he greatly admired figures like Priestley [1733-1804], Lavoisier [1743-94] [Haehl, I, 32; Bradford, 38] and Berzelius [1779-1848; Dudgeon, xxi].
"But the sole consolation of Hahnemann's existence in Dessau [1779-83] was his daily visit to the apothecary, Häesler, in whose laboratory he could continue his study of chemistry." [Gumpert, 26]
"The time he spent in Dessau afforded him a welcome opportunity of pursuing his chemical research in the laboratory of the Moor Apothecary Shop -- work which was so significant for his pioneer activities in medicine." [Haehl, I, 265]
"Hahnemann devoted himself entirely to chemistry and writing, according to his own admission. He puts chemistry first. In this science he was self-taught. He had never received any definite course of instruction in the subject or possessed a laboratory except during his stay in Dessau (1781), where he had found a suitable place in the Moor Apothecary Shop for his experiments and probably also an occasional tutor in the person of the Apothecary Häesler." [Haehl, I, 268]
However, this chemical interest could also be interpreted as a means for him to test some of the alchemical insights he had derived from secret study of arcane medical texts. Consider, for example, Hepar sulph and Causticum that require overtly alchemical procedures like calcination and distillation for their preparation [Chronic Diseases, I, 559, 762; Bradford, 152]. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that he acquired some practical experience and instruction in alchemy from Häesler.
Finally, the fourth great force at work in him, and which dominated his thinking at this time of crisis, was his study of the medical past through his great skill as a linguist and as the translator of diverse scientific and medical treatises from Latin, French, and English into the German language:
"[In 1784]...he translated Demarchy's 'The Art of Manufacturing Chemical Products' from the French. It was an elaborate work in two volumes, to which he made numerous additions of his own." [Gumpert, 34].
Yet, Hahnemann, "driven by his own inward dissatisfaction, eked out only a scanty living by means of translations," [Haehl, I, 262]. As a measure of his great energy, he "published during this period [1790-1805] over 5,500 printed pages - original work, essays in medical journals, and translations, among these were works of fundamental importance, which deserve special attention," [Haehl, I, 48]. During the period from 1777 to 1806, he translated 24 texts from other languages into German. All but six of these translations were made during the 1780's and 1790's, when he was conducting various chemical experiments.
Recognising "the insufficiency of medical science," [Haehl, I, 33], and "disgusted with the errors and uncertainties of the prevalent methods of medical practice," [Bradford, 36], it was probably his "growing disgust for the medical fallacies of the day," [Bradford, 43], and while "searching for some reliable basis upon which to resume practice," [Coulter, II, 311], that forced Hahnemann back within himself to study the medical past and to reconsider some of those strange medical ideas which he had first encountered in von Brukenthal's great library in Sibiu - allegedly the greatest collection of arcane medical texts in Europe. [Neagu, and website], and study of which had made him "master of occult sciences," [Bradford, 28]. How else can we explain his behaviour? When the tried and tested has failed us, then we cast around within the sphere of the known, and even into the sphere of the unknown, to find a replacement set of ideas and methods. This is by no means an unreasonable viewpoint, and explains much.
"After I had discovered the weakness and errors of my teachers and books, I sank into a state of sorrowful indignation, which had nearly altogether disgusted me with the study of medicine." [Opening lines of Aesculapius in the Balance, 1805, in Lesser Writings, 410, Jain Edition]
In essence, circumstance forces anyone who has lost everything to reconsider in greater depth those things they had previously and perhaps impulsively cast aside as useless. Discovering the abject failure of orthodoxy, and being rendered bereft of any medical philosophy at all, must have inspired Hahnemann to reinvestigate the old systems with a fresh and more attentive spirit. He was thus impelled to indulge the other three passions to a much greater extent: reading and translating, conducting chemical experiments and reviewing those ideas and methods from the arcane world.
In somewhat wearily embarking upon this new path, prepared for him by Destiny and "his conscience," [Bradford, 36; Haehl, I, 47], Hahnemann must soon have found himself the inheritor of a range of complex problems issuing from the medical past, which prevented him from taking up medical practice. These also barred his way to further progress because they were simply unsolved riddles, age-old problems that each of his illustrious predecessors had failed fully to solve: such fundamental matters as similars vs. contraries; mixed vs. single drugs; large or small doses; vitalism vs. mechanism. In his reading, Hahnemann soon laid bare a complex web of contrasting opinions amounting to a veritable war-zone of debate. Sydenham [1624-89], Hoffmann [1660-1742] and Boerhaave [1668-1738], had their views, which, though rising to prominence in the 17th and 18th centuries, did not enjoy universal acceptance by all the medical profession. They represented the ascending mechanical and materialist school, which portrayed the body as little more than a machine.
This age of medicine can be seen as an age dominated by the machine. Just as the first sciences were concerned with mechanics, the laws governing the movement of physical objects, so too in the 1500s and 1600s the main focus is upon the physical body itself, its dissection, drawings of the organs and the machine-like conception of blood flow, the mechanics of muscle action and the pneumatic principles of breathing. The anatomical work of Harvey [1578-1657] and Vesalius [1514-64], Boyle's work on gases, and the drawings by Leonardo [1452-1519] are therefore very typical advances of this period. We might realistically conceive these advances to be the 'medical analogues' of the machine cosmology of Newton [1642-1727], Copernicus [1473-1543], Galileo [1564-1642] and Kepler [1571-1630], and probably reflect an excessive "admiration for the triumphs of the sciences since Galileo and Newton," [Berlin, 1996, 28].
This age also sought to displace all those previously dominant magical and religious elements in medical conceptuality, and what had become a "period of conformity...mechanical, and in the end meaningless, through mere repetition... the blankest patches in the history of human thought...a great and arid waste," [Berlin, 1996, 74].
The supernatural fabric of medieval medicine gradually became abandoned and dismantled and so fell into neglect, to be replaced by the new passion for 'mechanism' extolled by figures like Hoffmann and Boerhaave. What happened in medicine certainly reflected things happening, and conceptual shifts taking place in the natural sciences and philosophy. Mechanics dominated everything at that time.
Sydenham, for example, who had very much set this impulse going, ruthlessly stripped disease of any deeper philosophical relevance to the life of the patient as a being, made individuality inconsequential, and regarded any disease as merely another example of an infection by some noxious external agent that has invaded the patient for no particular ethical or spiritual reason. No special meaning was to be attached to any disease. He "applied his objective investigations to both the treatment and to the description of diseases. Divesting himself of much medieval tradition, he approached therapeutic problems in a relatively empirical manner," [Shryock, 12].
He "turned to methodological empiricism," [Warner, 44; King, 1970] and gave credence to the view that a disease was a real entity separate from the patient [Porter, 230]. Sydenham also "converted Bacon's neo-Platonic 'form' into a wholly new concept - the specific disease'..." [Coulter, II, 2, 180]. He viewed diseases as "clear and distinct entities ripe for taxonomy," [Porter, 307]. "...the description of a disease as an entity. This latter meaning prevailed with Thomas Sydenham," [Temkin, 28]. Sydenham also misinterpreted Paracelsus about the physical nature of morbific particles of contagion, echoing the view of Fracastoro [1478-1553; Veith, 505], and so spawned the basis for the modern Germ Theory of disease.
"Where the ancients had seen an inseparable connection between the patient and his malady, Sydenham saw in the patient certain pathological symptoms which he had observed in others and expected to see again...he distinguished between the sick man and the illness, and objectified the latter as a thing in itself. This was a new outlook, an ontological conception of the nature of disease which was eventually to prove of the utmost significance." [Shryock, 13, my emphases].
Like Sydenham, Hahnemann also revered Bacon as the founder of the inductive scientific method [see Close, 1924, 15, 27-8, 248-9].
Then, by contrast, there were those full-blooded vitalists like Paracelsus [1493-1541], van Helmont [1577-1644] and Stahl [1660-1734], who held a more esoteric stance, believing that each disease carries a special spiritual aspect as well as its obvious physical attributes. Like homeopaths such as Kent [1849-1916], they rejected the outer physical aspects of disease as being the true realm of disease causation, believing the organism to possess an inner 'spiritual body' or 'vital force' - "...Van Helmont's Archeus, Stahl's Animal Soul..." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 490; Haehl, I, 284] - that heals and coordinates during health, but which also harbours the root causes of sickness, and what van Helmont called "...exogenous agents...that irritate the Archeus..." [Pagel, 428]. In the Organon, when writing about the vital force, Hahnemann even "uses phrases that might have been Stahl's own," [Haehl, I, 284].
Unlike Sydenham, van Helmont correctly interpreted Paracelsus that contagion occurred by a "spiritual Gas," [Pagel, 1946, 436] that invades the Archeus and so creates sickness. Contagion had always been viewed as a spiritual process and never physical. These ideas also resurfaced with homeopaths like Kent, who denounced "the bacteria doctrine," and "the molecular theory," in favour of a position of unbridled vitalism, declaring that "We do not take disease through our bodies but through the Vital Force," [Kent, Lesser Writings, 1926].
"...the old school of medicine believed it might cure diseases in a direct manner by the removal of the [imaginary] material cause..." [Organon, 4]
"These [allopathically conceived disease entities]...were all idle dreams, unfounded assumptions and hypotheses, cunningly devised for the convenience of therapeutics...the easiest way of performing a cure would be to remove the material, morbific matters..." [Organon, 7]
The eighteenth century then surrendered itself completely to a period of unrestrained speculation and quite absurd medical theorising, about which Hahnemann was profoundly contemptuous:
"...metaphysical, mystical, and supernatural speculations, which idle and self-sufficient visionaries have devised..." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 491]
"...vapoury theorising...word-mongers...system-framers and system-followers...framed for show, for a make-believe, and not for use... [Lesser Writings, 1808, 497-8]
"...the state of the body has only been viewed through the spectacles of manufactured systems..." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 499]
"...we were fooled by the natural philosophers....their whole conception - so unintelligible, so hollow and unmeaning, that no clear sense could be drawn from it." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 494]
"...inflated bombast, passing for demonstration, abounding in words, but void of sense - all the antics and curvets of the sophists...perfectly insufferable." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 492]
"This...made the medical art a stage for the display of the most fantastic, often most self-contradictory, hypotheses, explanations, demonstrations, conjectures, dogmas, and systems, whose evil consequences are not to be overlooked..." [Hahnemann, 1808, 489-90]
It was customary, even up to the end of the 19th century, for medical students to be taught all previous systems of healing, and have their heads "crammed with theories and systems," [Haehl, I, 24]: "Even the student was taught to think he was master of the art of discovering and removing disease, when he had stuffed his head with these baseless hypotheses...leading him as far as possible away from a true conception of disease and its cure," [Lesser Writings, 1808, 490]. In "the eighteenth century, the opinions of these men were still matters of vital concern," [Temkin, 1946, 15], and knowing "the various systems of the time was a matter of necessary orientation for the doctor," [Temkin, 1946, 16]. Indeed, Greek and Latin authors "were still read and interpreted in the medical faculties of the universities in the early nineteenth cnetury," [Temkin, 22]
Being something of "a student of ancient history," [Bradford, 150], Hahnemann, in his insistent probing, dislodged problems flowing from both medical traditions, and thus became the inheritor of a mass of conflicting views and techniques, which circumstance more or less forced him to pick his way through in order to make sense of the medicine of his day. Making very slow progress along what was a crooked, thistle-strewn and rocky path towards his construction of a new system, which worked in practice as well as having a sound underpinning rationale of coherent ideas, such was the mountain Hahnemann had chosen to climb, as he trudged along a bitterly lonely and perilous track, illuminated at times, and but dimly, only by the bright lamp of his inner hope.
Earning only a "meagre living through work as a translator, writer and chemical researcher..." [Nicholls, 1988, 11], Hahnemann was a lonely figure in the 1780s, and seems to have been more or less paralysed by the uncertainty of his position. It was doubtless this paralysing fog of uncertainty that had eventually forced him to abandon medical practice completely [Bradford, 37]. "Hahnemann at this time, 1790, was poor," [Bradford, 47]. His "struggle with poverty," [Haehl, I, 34] reduced him to the merely passive role of a scholar of the medical past and a translator of medical texts; "his translation work gave him meagre support...in the year 1791, poverty compelled him to move from Leipzic to Stotteritz," [Bradford, 51]. "He reduced himself and his family to want for conscience sake," [Bradford, 36]. But to what extent how being reduced to penury by lowly translation work [Haehl, I, 262], affected his sense of self-worth or pride in being a doctor, and for which he had worked so hard, is an interesting point. It is highly likely that his pride was hurt, because "Hahnemann entertained a high conception of the physician's dignity...[and a] justifiable pride in his calling," [Haehl, I, 278].
Two features particularly stand out in all this that are most remarkable. Firstly, in all his writings he rarely mentions by name the great figures of the medical past, who were creators of vitalist medical systems and his greatest forebears, and who had laid out the very foundations upon which homeopathy would be built. Mention of these figures is so scant as to be conspicuous by its virtual absence in all his writings.
It is especially suspicious that Hahnemann only fleetingly mentions Stahl, Paracelsus or van Helmont by name, who truly were his greatest forebears and it is mostly their ideas and connected problems, which he inherited and was able to solve, update and push forwards. It is therefore very hard to explain why a man so saturated in every medical theorist and practitioner of the past, and possessed of such an encyclopaedic knowledge of systems ["He used 861 quotations from 389 books in his essay on Arsenic." Bradford, 40, 93; see also Haehl, I, 97], should then remain so silent about those to whom his own system owes so much.
Stahl's system involved a vital principle that he called the 'anima', which was the "Hippocratic 'physis' to which Stahl added the attributes of Paracelus' 'Alchemist' and van Helmont's 'Archeus'..." [Coulter, II, 229]. Stahl made it clear that he regarded the Anima as a vital principle, because it "directs and controls the organism and its struggle against harmful environmental influences," [Coulter, II, 231] and which "protects it in health and cures it when diseased," [Coulter, II, 232].
"Paracelsus's system...was a rude form of homeopathy...but it was not equal in value to Hahnemann's system..." [Dudgeon, 1853, 14]
In what is a clear reference to his deeper knowledge of Paracelsus, Hahnemann talks of: "...the old mystic number three...triplicity, presented a miniature of the universe [microcosm, macrocosm]...explained to a hair's-breadth..." [Lesser Writings, 490]. Hahnemann’s medical outlook, "like that of Paracelsus, was shaped by his early life…the parallels between their careers, as between their medical doctrines, are striking," [Coulter, II, 306].
Yet, when Dr Trinks, in 1825, asked him directly about Paracelsus, he replied "that it was unknown to him," [Haehl, I, 274], claiming he knew nothing about "the great heresiarch," [Temkin, 1946, 18], claiming never to have read a single word he had ever written or to know anything about his medical system. "In 1825 Trinks...pointed out to Hahnemann that the principles of homeopathy are to be found in Paracelsus. Hahnemann replied that until that moment, he had known nothing of it," [Haehl, I, 425]. In a letter to Dr Stapf, "Hahnemann refused very definitely, and with some indignation to be associated with Paracelsus's fantastic and will-o-the-wisp...[theories]," [Haehl, I, 274], having had "no suspicion that Paracelsus had similar ideas," [Haehl, I, 273]. These denials amount to outright lies and clearly reveal how determined Hahnemann had become to conceal his true sources. It is utterly inconceivable that Hahnemann knew nothing about Paracelsus. Goethe even refers to Hahnemann as "this new Theophrastus Paracelsus," [Haehl, I, 113].
"Like Paracelsus and van Helmont, he was disillusioned with the prevailing ideas and retired from practice to think out a new approach," [Coulter, II, 310].
Yet, he only once mentions Stahl, "the founder of vitalism," [Veith, 505-6], and van Helmont [Lesser Writings, 1808, 490], who were undoubtedly two of the greatest builders of vitalist medical systems, and both holding views remarkably concordant with his own. How can such a broad confluence of medical ideas reasonably have been coincidental? Their views on such central matters as the life force and miasms come so astonishingly close to those of Hahnemann that it is quite simply impossible for such a well-read and articulate physician like Hahnemann to claim any ignorance of their names or their medical views. Van Helmont's 'Archeus' and Stahl's 'anima' [Temkin, 1946, 22; Haehl, I, 284] are virtually identical to Hahnemann's life-force and perform exactly the same function within the conceptual fabric of these three medical systems.
The second remarkable feature is that Hahnemann also remained very tight-lipped about his esoteric studies with von Brukenthal in Sibiu in the late 1770s and because of which he was a lifelong Freemason and an active member of a Masonic lodge in every town wherever he lived [Haehl, I, 23], and which was a subject to which he was "inwardly greatly attracted," [Haehl, I, 255]. Haehl claims he was always "a good Mason," [Haehl, I, 119, 253]. This again seems to reveal some hidden, undisclosed aspect of the man, about which he also remained silent. Given that he had such a brilliant mind, such exceptional reasoning and debating skills, such linguistic gifts [Haehl, I, 10-15, 34-35; Bradford, 28, 94] and such rare, subtle and profound skills as a thinker and observer [Haehl, I, 250-2], it is hard to imagine why he chose not to write about the great medical problems of the past with which he must undoubtedly have struggled and in which he was daily immersed between say 1780 and 1800. Thus again we are forced to conclude that Hahnemann deliberately chose to stay silent on all these pertinent matters.
What were truly "wilderness years" [Coulter, II, 348], the 1780s and 1790s were entirely devoted to one grand struggle: the gradual demolition of his old views, a steady formulation of the new and a long and complex process of mental metamorphosis, sifting, analysis, reflection and experimentation, a movement from darkness towards light, "a state of complete internal revolution," [Haehl, I, 48] that finally led him to the triumphant realisation of his dreams and that gave slow and painful birth to homeopathic medicine, rising like some Phoenix out of the ashes of his bitterly disappointing early years of medical practice and his long years of study. Having been to Hell and back, he returned like a prodigal: strengthened, renewed and undeterred:
"He could only wait for the moment, as inevitable as the Day of Judgement, which would see him revealed as the apostle of a pure and true doctrine of medicine." [Gumpert, 59]
Having solved the two greatest riddles in medical history - the relationship between the drug and the disease/patient, and the dose-dependent relationship between the toxic and therapeutic actions of drugs - he was determined to tell the world what his answers were – the proving and potentisation of single drugs.
"Men of authentic genius are necessarily to a large degree destructive of past traditions. Great philosophers always transform, upset and destroy. It is only the small philosophers who defend vested interests, apply rules, squeeze into procrustean beds." [Berlin, 1996, 70]
"He sought to discover the specific relations of certain medicines to certain diseases, to certain organs and tissues, he strove to do away with the blind chimney-sweeper's methods of dulling symptoms." [Gumpert, 99]
"He struck deadly blows...first...that the doctor should prepare his own medicines; second...the administration of small doses; and, third, he was a most passionate opponent of mixed doses that contained a large number of ingredients." [Gumpert, 96]
"...employment of the many-mixed, this pell-mell administration of several substances at once...these hotch-potch doses..." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 498]
Yet, in this other sense about which we speak, this unusually garrulous and articulate Hahnemann, so often given to "raging like a hurricane," [Haehl, I, 98], or ranting "like the old prophets," [Haehl, I, 33], has consistently and mysteriously failed to tell the world where his ideas came from or in which particular brood-chamber they had long fermented, or finally been hatched. He declined to reveal whom he had drawn on the most and what the true antecedents or roots of homeopathy were. As we have seen, on all these points, he remained conspicuously silent and cloaked himself only in denial, obfuscation, and a profound and uncharacteristic reticence.
There seems little point, therefore, in denying the facts. Hahnemann did have intimate knowledge of these great figures and their grand medical conceptions, but he deliberately chose never to mention them. This somewhat baffling and monumental silence therefore raises the inevitable question of why a man with such detailed knowledge of all these matters, refused to discuss or to lay out before his contemporaries an honest account of the true origins of his new medical system; a point we shall presently examine.
Two passages in his writings, especially revealing his deeper knowledge of medical history and systems, occur in the essays 'On the Helleborism of the Ancients' [1811], and 'Aesculapius in the Balance' [1805], which can be read in his Lesser Writings, pp.569-616, and pp.419-26 respectively. Other useful comments he makes about medical systems can be seen in his 'On the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine' [1808] and 'On the Great Necessity of a Regeneration of Medicine' [1808], in Lesser Writings, pp.488-505, and pp.511-21 respectively.
Another important secret of Hahnemann is revealed in his choice of drugs to admit into his new materia medica. One feature that distinguishes homeopathy quite markedly from other medical systems is the large number of mineral drugs it employs. In The Chronic Diseases, for example, of the 48 drugs listed, 35 are minerals, 12 from plants and only one from an animal source [Sepia]. Thus, over 70% are of mineral origin. Hahnemann showed almost as strong a love of minerals, metals and acids, dozens of which appear in his materia medica, as his great forebears Paracelsus and van Helmont, who believed that minerals are blessed with greater potency as healing agents, because they are so ancient and take so long to form in the fabric of the earth, in comparison to most plants [Coulter, II, 48-9]. Again, Hahnemann never mentions them.
Similar notions were applied to metals, gems and other crystalline minerals, which were conceived to be the purified products of a slow maturation process, an alchemical form of gestation or distillation in the earth's crust, again imparting extreme healing potency upon them. While Hahnemann may not have shared these precise views, nevertheless the parallels are striking. It is of more than passing interest that his drug preferences disclose a heavy reliance on alchemical preconceptions, pointing to deeper knowledge of his own on such matters, but about which he never overtly speaks.
Paracelsus so loved minerals that he even preferred to augment plant tinctures with the ash from the burned plant, forming what he called a 'spagyric' remedy. This reflected his belief that the mineral component of a plant has especially strong healing powers, without which the tincture is an incomplete healing agent [Coulter, I, 350, 413, 421, 443; II, 51]. Again, this reflects a strong preference for mineral drugs, and also the notion that the unique life-force of each plant specially concocts a subtle blend of minerals from the soil, which becomes sealed with the 'spiritual imprint' of the plant's life-force. These ideas and techniques also found transmission through Goethe [1749-1832] to Rudolph Steiner [1861-1925] and sprouted in his anthroposophical medicine [Hill, 29], where similar techniques are still employed.
All such arcane knowledge, Hahnemann could easily have accessed - and very probably did - in the many esoteric medical and alchemical texts in Brukenthal's great library in Sibiu, and which he had spent "a year and nine months," [Bradford, 28] cataloguing. Indeed, it would be remarkable if he had not absorbed such ideas. Even the potentisation process could originally have been devised as a method to liberate and concentrate the 'healing spirit' [Archeus] of a substance, and thus seems strangely parallel to Paracelsan and alchemical techniques, though admittedly dressed up in a more scientific garb. In which case, fire, time, trituration and succussion therefore seem to be those sole and Promethean alchemical agents capable of transforming and purifying any substance and concentrating its 'spiritual imprint'. Such is and was 'medical alchemy'.
All things considered, therefore, it is very hard to believe that Hahnemann, such a well-read [Bradford, 35, 93] and inquisitive man himself, was not aware of these facts. Especially when we consider his immensely detailed knowledge of the various previous systems of healing [Lesser Writings, 420-3; 488-505; Bradford, 93-4], "his extraordinary knowledge of medical history," [Haehl, I, 97], or when considering his linguistic skills [Bradford, 28, 94], his translation work, and his librarianship and alchemical studies in Sibiu with von Brukenthal. All of these are bound to have brought him into intimate contact with such arcane details of these previous healing systems, some points of which must have been rubbed off and been retained in "his extraordinary memory," [Haehl, I, 277] from 5-6 years earlier. Quite simply, he must have known all these things, yet he never once mentions them.
Furthermore, anyone knowing homeopathy intimately, and especially the metaphysical ideas of giants like Kent, if they then turn to any serious study of the works of van Helmont, Stahl and Paracelsus, they will not fail to be impressed, if not amazed, by the numerous strong parallels begirdering all these vitalistic medical systems. As systems of ideas on the nature and causes of disease, of how the organism is thought to function, on the life-force, the most likely remedies and their modes of selection and preparation, then it becomes apparent that the parallels between them are so numerous and striking to ever be regarded as coincidental.
However, even if he knew them as intimately as seems likely, that still does not mean that Hahnemann simply sat down and copied them all wholesale. Rather, it seems more likely that he will have received abundant inspiration just from contemplating them. Copying those basic principles that chimed best with his own thoughts and medical experience - similars and single drugs, for example - he could then pick up and extend them further through experiment. Proceeding exactly in such a manner; he could then build up a corpus of likely ideas, to inspire his experiments and guide his choice of drugs. Much like rich veins, he could go back to these systems repeatedly to draw fresh inspiration.
As we have seen, it is well nigh impossible that he was ignorant of these systems and probably read them in detail in their original Latin and German, [Haehl, I, 250; Bradford, 28, 94].
Though he felt obliged to strip these systems bare of their astrology and theology, their supernatural garb, with which he had little patience: "...metaphysical, mystical, and supernatural speculations, which idle and self-sufficient visionaries have devised..." [Lesser Writings, 1808, 491]; "...now the influence of the stars, now that of evil spirits and witchcraft..." [Lesser Writings, 1805, 421]. In an especially contemptuous blast, Hahnemann even questions how "old astrology was to explain what puzzled modern natural philosophy..." [Lesser Writings, 490]. "The majority of elite men and the medical establishment no longer valued astrology by the early 18th century and it ceased to occupy a central place..." [Gouk, 317]
Yet, what is left is still strikingly similar to homeopathy in respect of small doses; single drugs; many metals, acids and minerals; miasms as taints [disease images] contained in the life-force [Archeus or anima]; that the internal disease-causing factors predominate as true causes and must be neutralised by internally-employed medicines, often singly, in small, widely-spaced doses; and that a resonance or sympathy pertains between the malady and the remedy; that like cures like; and that the true image of a sickness/person matches in detail the image of the correct drug. There is broad agreement on all such central matters. And Hahnemann must have known this.
True to their times, Van Helmont and Paracelsus did, however, lean far more heavily upon alleged spiritual, astral and theological causes of disease: the "blas of the stars," [Coulter, II, 200] while Hahnemann typically gives only 'defects in the life force', which allows 'susceptibility' to act as the generalised 'template' upon which acute and chronic maladies can then establish themselves. Homeopathy, like all other vitalist systems, respects the obvious physiological holism and vitalism of the body, and always seeks to strengthen its innate healing power or vital force [Haehl, I, 64, 284, 289]. This approach does not deny, but embraces, the subtle differences between individual cases of a disease, and reaffirms that disease and patient comprise inseparably dual aspects of one united biophysical continuum. Disease is viewed as a 'dynamic derangement of the life force' [Close, 1924, 37-8, 74].
"The organism is indeed the material instrument of life, but it is not conceivable without the animation imparted to it by the instinctively perceiving and regulating vital force..." [Organon, para 15]
"Let it be granted now...that no disease...is caused by any material substance, but that every one is only and always a peculiar, virtual, dynamic derangement of the health..." [Organon, Introduction, 10]
Hahnemann was less keen to explore the psychological or psychic causes of sickness and he seems to play down the significance of such factors. Moreover, in homeopathy, that still remains a more or less blank sheet even to this day.
Having resolved in his own mind the importance of his own work, gave him greater confidence, even in adversity: "the...very opposition of his colleagues made him more resolute in his determination to carry out his plans alone, or with what casual assistance he could procure from non-professional friends," [Dudgeon, 1853, 181]. This might also suggest that he knew his own system was the best, because he knew intimately everything else that was on offer, and none of which worked in practice: "In an eight years' practice, pursued with conscientious attention, I had learned the delusive nature of the ordinary methods of treatment, and from sad experience I knew right well how far the methods of Sydenham, and Frederick Hoffmann, of Boerhaave and Gaubius, of Stoll, Quarin, Cullen, and De Haan were capable of curing," [Lesser Writings, 513].
We must accept that Hahnemann had his own reasons for ploughing a lonely furrow [see Haehl, I, 255], for not even mentioning the figures and systems of the past - a rich seam, which he must have gone back to repeatedly to quarry ideas and inspiration, and forming a vague template on which to build his homeopathic system. As he does occasionally refer to those past "system-makers," [Lesser Writings, 1808, 497-8] he disagrees with, such as Cullen [1710-90], Brown [1735-88], Hunter [1728-93], Galen [c.130-201], Boerhaave and Hoffmann, who he mostly repudiates [especially Galen - e.g. Lesser Writings, I, 421, 592], are we therefore entitled to presume that he deliberately neglected to mention those with whom he shared a broad measure of agreement?
Leaving all this information undisclosed could have been devised for two reasons - to leave the trail 'cold' for the inquisitive, and to give homeopathy the cleanest possible start in life as a brand new medical system, seeming to be complete unto itself and rooted solely in experiments that he had personally conducted, and possessed of medical principles, he had personally uncovered. Although this account is probably more true than false, it is still a shame that Hahnemann seemed too darned secretive and too proud [his egotism, Haehl, I, 256] to acknowledge his considerable debt to a small clutch of important medical predecessors, whose ideas and methods contain so much that is common to homeopathy. Such massive similarities between these systems must have been known to Hahnemann - probably in detail - and must have richly informed his formulation of homeopathy.
Clearly, Hahnemann seemed eager to sever homeopathy completely from its arcane roots and to deny that it had any spiritual or theological connections at all. In stripping these ancient systems bare of all their supernatural and magical elements, what is left is largely homeopathy. It is only when we look at figures like Kent that all such hastily ejected theological material comes back to the fore:
"You cannot divorce medicine and theology. Man exists all the way down from his innermost spiritual to his outermost natural" [Kent, Lesser Writings, 641]
Implicit to Kent's view is the notion that no matter how much Hahnemann - or anyone - tries to hide, deny, suppress or stamp out the spiritual, supernatural and theological in medicine, it has a strange habit of finding some means of expression, bubbling back to the surface. And so homeopathy will always re-establish its true connections and re-grow its true roots. The very things that Sydenham ejected from medieval medicine - in 'divorcing medicine and theology' [Veith, 502] - and which Hahnemann seems also to have discouraged, are as truly real links to homeopathy as ever. These links cannot be separated for too long and will yearn for, find and grow back to each other naturally like severed roots of the same plant.
Probably in order not to validate the rampant spirituality and Romantic philosophy of his day, Hahnemann did not wish homeopathy to be associated with the vitalist systems of the past, choosing instead to 'cover his tracks'. In an age like his so dominated by science, would he have wished to see homeopathy associated in any way with magical, religious or supernatural tendencies? He probably feared that any such links, if ever they were made explicit, would be a retrograde step, that could seriously impede its acceptance within wider medicine, that might smear his reputation as a scientist, or to offer even vague support for such nebulous ideas would somehow cast him in a bad light. That I think gives a fair account of this fascinating but highly convoluted matter.
Hahnemann's vociferous attitude towards allopathy meant that he did indeed regard "the old overthrown philosophy...as a mass of superstition and error." [Berlin, 1996, 62], as "...a chaotic amalgam of ignorance, laziness, guesswork, superstition, prejudice, dogma, fantasy..." [Berlin, 1979, 163] or "...casual impression, half-remembered, unverified recollections, guesswork, mere rules of thumb, unscientific hypotheses," [Berlin, 1996, 41]. And its antiquated corpus of ideas as little more than "...metaphysical and theological explanations unsupported by...evidence, conducted by methods the opposite of rational, the happy hunting ground of bigots and charlatans and their dupes and slaves," [Berlin, 1979, 133].
Wherever the true origins of homeopathy might lie hidden within previous healing systems, we can definitely say that with his most genuinely original contributions - the proving and potentisation - Hahnemann had effectively modernised and rekindled the previous vitalist systems, which, like long-silent and broken machines, he had fixed and which now hummed sweetly into new life. Had not this been his sole aim all along? Was this not indeed a revolution in medicine?
Haehl's assessment therefore looks more accurate afterall: "Medicine has nothing in the whole course of her history which in any way approaches the accomplishment of this man...[Hahnemann was]...primarily a champion - and indeed the most brilliant champion - of internal remedies, the imperfections and manifold unfruitfulness of which he undertook to metamorphose..." [Haehl, I, 274-5]. And the reasons now seem clearer too: "The task of the great philosophers who break through the orthodoxy is to sweep away the painstaking edifices of their honourable but limited predecessors who...tend to imprison thought within their own tidy but fatally misconceived constructions," [Berlin, 1996, 72].
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