QHD 2005 - Homeoxls

farewell in the Spring of 1779, and went to the
University of Erlangen to take his degree as Doctor
of Medicine, choosing Erlangen because the fees
were less than at Vienna. At this place on August
10, 1779, he successfully defended his thesis, and
received his diploma. From the time of graduation
in August until sometime in the year 1780, it is
probable that HAHNEMANN travelled about in the
towns of Lower Hungary. In the summer of 1780 a
home longing overcame him and he returned to
Saxony, at his home located in the little town of
Hettstadt in a copper mining country, where he
found little to do but study the mining. He
remained there nine months, going thence in the
spring-time of 1781 to Dessau, where he first
turned his attention to Chemistry, of which he
afterwards became one of the most able exponents
and experimentalists of the time. Here also he
gained much knowledge of practical mining and
smelting, which he afterwards utilized in writing
upon those subjects; and, as he so quaintly said: “I
filled the dormer windows of my mind.”
In Dessau HAHNEMANN met Johanna
Henrietta Leopoldine KUCHLER, daughter of
apothecary Kuchler, who became his life
companion. They were married on December 1,
1782. He was twenty-seven and she nineteen years
old. He had a short time previous taken the post of
parish doctor at Gommern, a small town not far
from Magdeburg. They went there and he at once
began regularly to practise his profession.
HAHNEMANN said that there had previously been
no physician at this place, and that the inhabitants
had no desire for any such person. Here he
remained two years and nine months. While there,
he made some important translations and published
his first original book “On the Treatment of Old
Sores and Ulcers.” In this work he gave the results
of his experience in Transylvania, and said that the
patients probably would have done quite as well
without him. And in writing of his treatment of a
case of caries of the metatarsal bone he said: “I
scraped the carious bone clean out and removed all
the dead part, dressed it with alcohol and watched
the result,” (not a bad method of treatment for the
surgery of the present day, and that was in 1784).
The matter of hygiene was mentioned in his book,
although at that time it was very little understood.
Even then the master was teaching in advance of
his time.
He now began, as he says, to taste the delights
of home; he was contented; his books and his
official position supported him; but the rude and
barbarous medical methods of the day disturbed his
logical and educated mind, which was trained to
expect definite results; and he disliked to give
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compounds whose effects on patient he was
ignorant of. He could not accept the loose ways
and methods of the existing medical schools. In the
celebrated letter to HUFELAND, the Nestor of
German Medicine, on the “Necessity of a
Regeneration in Medicine”, published sometime
afterward, HAHNEMANN fully explained his
feelings at that period of his life, and his reasons for
giving up the old practice of medicine hampered by
dogmas of doubt. He resigned his position at
Gommern in the autumn of 1784 and entirely gave
up practice that (in his own words) “I might no
longer incur the risk of doing injury, and I engaged
exclusively in Chemistry and in literary
occupations.” His mind was now reaching out
toward his ideal. As he once said to HUFELAND,
he could not understand a God who had not
provided some certain method of contemplating
diseases from their own aspect and of curing them
with certainty. “But why has this method not been
discovered during the twenty-five or thirty
centuries in which men have called themselves
physicians? Because it is too near us, and too easy;
because to attain it there is no need of brilliant
sophisms or seducing hypothesis.” Impelled by a
something within him to seek, HAHNEMANN
gave up the old practice of medicine and reduced
himself and family to comparative poverty for
conscience’s sake, and in the fulfillment of the
immutable law in his nature that he was powerless
to overcome. From Gommern he removed to
brilliant Dresden, then the home of arts and
sciences and devoted his time to translations and
the study of Chemistry. He also studied medical
jurisprudence with Dr. WAGNER, the town
physician or Health Officer, who became his friend
and gave him charge of the hospitals of the town
for a year. At this time HAHNEMANN was well
known in Germany as a scholarly translator of
scientific books, and a daring and successful
experimentalist in Chemistry. He was received
with warm welcome by the distinguished scholars
who resided in Dresden - ADELUNG, who had
made a compilation in five volumes of the history
of all known languages and dialects and who was
perhaps the foremost philologist in the world;
DASDORF, the librarian of the great Electoral
library – himself a ripe scholar; BLUMENBACH,
the naturalist; and LAVOSIER, the ill-fated
chemist, a victim of the reign of terror. Such was
the company HAHNEMANN enjoyed, scholar in
scholarly atmosphere and in the companionship of
men of wisdom. This life continued four pleasant
years. Up to this time all the translations of
scientific works and the original books he had
written were of such a nature as to render more fit
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