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Hahnemann – the Founder of Homoeopathy
At this time the significance of hygiene, exercise and diet were little known but Hahnemann was a strict adherent to the rules of proper lifestyle habits and therefore the first doctor to introduce these concepts to the medical profession. Though he enjoyed success due to his hygienic approach and the fact that he was undoubtedly a very competent physician, he felt increasingly dissatisfied with the crude methods and attitude within the field of allopathic medicine and already very early in his medical career he had this to say: “A number of causes – I dare to not to count them up – have for centuries been dragging down the dignity of that divine science of practical medicine, and have converted it into a miserable grabbing after bread, a mere cloaking of symptoms, a degrading prescription trade, a very God forgotten handiwork, so that the real physicians are hopelessly jumbled together with a heap of befrilled medicine mongers”. Despite being a prominent physician and surgeon, he honestly expressed his little confidence in the prevailing methods and stated that most of his patients would have done as well or even better without his aid. The inconsistencies and fallacies of the allopathic medical practice fell far below his ideal of a healing art and he was very reluctant to continue practising. He had a family to support but on the other hand Hahnemann was a very genuine and conscientious human being and remembering the teaching of his father “never to accept anything in science until it had been proven to be true by investigation”, he resigned his medical position in 1784 and resolved to investigate for himself to discover if some law existed where the diseases of mankind could be cured with certainty. It is simple to understand that to Hahnemann, the translator, the philologist, the chemist and surgeon, accustomed to the arbitrary rules governing language and chemistry, the laxity and confusion in the laws of medicine must have been a continual source of annoyance. And let it be born in mind that he was a very skilled physician who was better read in the various notions of the medical books than most of his fellow colleagues. So though his heart was absorbed in the desire to do good and his love for medical science was great, his ideas of right prevented him from continuing in practice.
I took by way of experiment, twice a day, four drachms of good China (Peruvian Bark). My feet, finger ends etc, at first became cold. I grew languid and drowsy, then my heart began to palpitate, and my pulse grew hard and small, intolerable anxiety, trembling (but without cold rigor), prostration throughout all my limbs, then pulsation in my head, redness of my cheeks, thirst, and in short, all these symptoms which are ordinarily characteristics of intermittent fever, made their appearance, one after the other. Briefly, even those symptoms which are of regular occurrence and especially characteristic, -as the stupidity of mind, the kind of rigidity in all limbs, but, above all the numb disagreeable sensation, which seems to have its seat in the periosteum, over every bone in the body, -all these make their appearance”. This proving gave rise to many more experiments with numerous substances and homoeopathy developed into a fine, precise and extremely scientific medicinal system of healing. Hahnemann wished to develop a soft therapy capable of restoring health and equilibrium within the patient, in as gentle, rapid and permanent manner as possible. He certainly succeeded in his aspiration, as billions of people across the world effectively are using homoeopathy to aid all kinds of acute and chronic illnesses. These days much research is being carried out by proficient homoeopaths and researchers alike, guaranteeing that homoeopathy continues to be a dynamic, specific and above all efficient art of healing.
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Dr. Samuel Hahnemann was born in 1755 in Meissen, a small town nearby Dresden in Germany. The son of a porcelain manufactory designer, he grew up in modest conditions and began his literate career being taught elementary reading and writing by his parents. However, he got permitted into the local school where his aptitude was soon discovered. At the age of twelve Hahnemann was teaching Greek to the fascination of students and Greek professors alike. At the age of twenty young Hahnemann travels to Leipsic to study medicine, which is the beginning of an exceptional career within the field of therapy. After a few years in Leipsic his eagerness to study further medicine brings him to Vienna. In Vienna he befriends the prince’s family physician and is credited much knowledge and priority, for which his always penetrating and curious mind is much grateful. However, circumstances brought him from Vienna to Transylvania, where Baron von Bruckenthal appreciates his help as a family physician and library custodian. In the Barons impressive library Hahnemann studied medicine, botany and chemistry in several languages, which later became imperative to his career and development of homoeopathy. In 1779 he graduates as a doctor of medicine and set out to the mining town of Hettstadt from which he moved after just nine months in the favour of Dessau. In Dessau he seriously advanced into the field of chemistry, which for many years earned Hahnemann a great name and great success. Actually some of his chemical compounds and discoveries are still utilised by the allopathic medical industry today. Hahnemann moves to Gommern in 1791 where he expands his practice and marries his first wife, the nineteen year old Johanna Henrietta Leopoldina Kuchler. 
Instead he devoted most of his time to chemistry and translation of medical, chemical and botanical works from French, English, Greek and Latin in order to earn his living. In 1789 Hahnemann, being the most accomplished translator of medical works at that time, is asked to translate Dr. Cullen’s materia medica (book of medicines). Dr. Cullen was an authority on the subject of materia medica, an experienced lecturer, a talented chemist and a brilliant and popular teacher in Scotland. In his materia medica Dr. Cullen writes twenty pages about 