HAHNEMANN, SAMUEL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (1755-'843)

This article appears in Volume V12, Page 819 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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HAHNEMANN, SAMUEL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (1755-'843) , German physician and founder of " homoeopathy," was born at Meissen in Saxony on the loth of April 1755. He was educated at the " elector's school " of Meissen, and studied medicine at

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

and Vienna, taking the degree of M.D. at Erlangen in 1779. After practising in various places, he settled in Dresden in 1784, and thence removed to

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

in 1789. In the following year, while translating W.

Cullen

's Materia medica into German, he was struck by the fact that the symptoms produced by quinine on the healthy

body

BODY

were similar to those of the disordered states it was used to cure. He had previously felt dissatisfied with the state of the science of medicine, and this observation led him to assert the truth of the " law of similars," similia similibus curantur or curenturi.e. diseases are cured (or should be treated) by those drugs which produce symptoms similar to them in the healthy. He promulgated his new principle in a

paper

PAPER
PAPER (Fr. papier, from Lat. papyrus)

published in 1796 in C. W.

Hufeland

's Journal, and four years later, convinced that drugs in much smaller doses than were generally employed effectually exerted their curative powers, he advanced his doctrine of their potentization or dynamization. In 1810 he published his

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

work

WORK

, Organon der rationellen Heilkunde, containing an exposition of his system, which he called homoeopathy (q.v.), and in the following years appeared the six volumes of his Reine Arzneimittellehre, which detailed the symptoms produced by "proving" a large number of drugs, i.e. by systematically administering them to healthy subjects. In 1821 the hostility of established interests, and especially of the apothecaries, whose services were not required under his system, forced him to leave Leipzig, and at the invitation of the grand-duke of Anhalt-Cothen he went to live at Cothen. Fourteen years later he removed to Paris, where he practised with

great

GREAT

success until his death on the 2nd of July 1843. Statues were erected to his memory at Leipzig in 1851 and at Cothen in 1855. He also wrote, in addition to the works already mentioned, Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis (18o5) and Die ch.ronischenKrankheiten (1828-183o).
See the article HOMOEOPATHY; also Albrecht, Hahnemann's Leben and Werken (Leipzig, 1875); Bradford, I-Iahnemann's Life and Letters (Philadelphia, 1895).
HAHN-HAHN, IDA, COUNTESS VON (18o5-188o), German author, was born at Tressow, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on the 22nd of June 1805, daughter of Graf (Count) Karl Friedrich-von Hahn (1782-18J7), well known for his enthusiasm for the stage, upon which he squandered a large portion of his fortune. She married in 1826 her wealthy

cousin

Count Adolf von Hahn-Hahn. With him she had an extremely unhappy life, and in 1820 her husband's irregularities led to a divorce. The countess travelled, produced some volumes of poetry indicating true819
lyrical feeling, and in 1838 appeared as a novelist with Aus der Gesellschaft, a title which, proving equally applicable to her subsequent novels, was retained as that of a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

, the book originally so entitled being renamed Ida Schonholm. For several years the countess continued to produce novels bearing a certain subjective resemblance to those of George Sand, but less hostile to social institutions, and dealing almost exclusively with aristocratic society. The author's patrician affectations at length drew upon her the merciless ridicule of Fanny Lewald in a parody of her style entitled Diogena (1847), and this and the revolution of 1848 together seem tc have co-operated in inducing her to embrace the Roman Catholic religion in 1850. She justified her step in a polemical

work

WORK

entitled Von Babylon nach Jerusalem (1851), which elicited a vigorous reply from H. Abeken. In 1852 she retired into a convent at Angers, which she, however, soon left, taking up her residence at Mainz where she founded a nunnery, in which she lived without joining the order, and continued her literary labours. For many years her novels were the most popular works of fiction in aristocratic circles; many of her later publications, however, passed unnoticed as mere party manifestoes. Her earlier works do not deserve the neglect into which they have fallen. If their sentimentalism is some-times wearisome, it is grounded on genuine feeling and expressed with passionate eloquence. Ulrich and Grafin Faustine, both published in 1841, mark the culmination of her power; but Sigismund Forster (1843), Cecil (1844), Sibylle (1846) and Maria Regina (186o) also obtained considerable popularity. She died at Mainz on the 12th of January 1880.
Her collected works, Gesammelte Werke, with an introduction by 0. von Schaching, were published in two

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

, 45 volumes in all (Regensburg, 1903-1904). See H. Keiter, Grafin Hahn-Hahn (Wiirzhurg, undated) ; P. Haffner, Grafin Ida Hahn-Hahn, eine psychologische Studie (Frankfort, 188o) ; A. Jacoby, Ida Grafin Hahn-Hahn (Mainz, 1894).

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