Homoeopath Joanna Kelly
ABOUT HOMOEOPATHY
ABOUT SAMUEL HAHNEMANN
Samuel Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Saxony in Germany in 1755. He is the founder of homoeopathy. He was a remarkable scholar, the master of several languages including English, French Greek, and Latin, which he used extensively in many translation works. He was a master of chemistry, and was a renowned allopathic doctor before he discovered homoeopathy. He was a pioneer of public health, dietics and personal hygiene principals. He was an advocate of the humane treatment of the mentally ill. He revolutionized the barbaric medical practices of the 19th Century. He saw homoeopathy as the next logical progression of the science of medicine, not as an alternative. For a long time and still in many places throughout the world, this has been achieved.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE ORGANON OF MEDICINE (1810)
According to the testimony of all ages, no occupation is more unanimously declared to be a conjectural art than medicine; consequently none has less right to refuse a searching enquiry as to whether it is well founded that it, on which man’s health, his most precious possession on earth, depends.
I consider that it redounds to my honour that I am the only one in recent times who has subjected it to a serious honest investigation, and has communicated to the world the results of his convictions in writings published, some with, some without my name.
In this investigation I found the way to the truth, but I had to tread it alone, very far from the common highway of medical routine. The farther I advanced from truth to truth, the more my conclusions (none of which I accepted unless confirmed by experience) led me away from the old edifice, which, being built up of opinions, was only maintained by opinions.
The results of my convictions are set forth in this book.
It remains to be seen whether physicians, who mean to act honestly by their conscience and by their fellow-creatures, will continue to stick to the pernicious tissue of conjectures and caprice, or can open their eyes to the salutary truth.
I must warn the reader that indolence, love of ease and obstinacy preclude effective service at the altar of truth, and only freedom from prejudice and untiring zeal qualify for the most sacred of all human occupations, the practice of the true system of medicine. The physician who enters on his work in this spirit becomes directly assimilated to the Divine Creator of the world, whose human creatures he helps to preserve, and whose approval renders him thrice blessed.
From George Dimitriadis’ book The Theory Of Chronic Disease According To Hahnemann 2005 Southwood press Sydney. He quotes H. Choudry on Hahnemann’s theory of chronic disease:
“Whatever the dictionary meaning of the term ‘miasm’ may be, Hahnemann had clearly specified the meaning as parasites, germs, viruses, and minute living bodies, etc. in different chapters in his epoch making books Chronic Diseases and Lesser Writings.
Although Hahnemann had no microscope but more than 50 years before Koch’s discovery [of the comma bacillus of cholera in 1882] he was the first to perceive, teach and discover the parasitical nature of all infectious diseases and the Chronic Diseases in general in the year 1827 before publication of his book ‘Chronic Diseases’. It is all the more significant that Hahnemann recognized the presence of bacteria in epidemic and acute diseases in 1818, more than sixty years before Koch isolated the tubercule bacillus.
It is evident that that Hahnemann’s miasms are nothing but bacteria and other micro-organisms according to modern terminology”
About C.M.F. von Bonninghausen
Baron Clemens Maria Von Bonninghausen was born in the Netherlands 1785. A faithful follower of Hahnemann’s homoeopathy, Bonninghausen revolutionized the method of remedy selection through the development of the repertory, which is an index system of homoeopathic medicines and symptoms. Samuel Hahnemann commended Bonninghausen’s first repertory in his book the Organon of Medicine. From 1830 Bonninghausen was in close touch with Hahnemann, until the close of Hahnemanns life, and as long as Bonninghausen lived he kept in close touch with all those practicing homoeopathy. He died in 1864 from a stroke.
“Bonninghausens Therpeutic Pocket Book remains one of the most significant texts in homoeopathy; not because it was the primary clinical reference of our profession for decades, but because its functionality, accuracy and ease of use remain unsurpassed to the present day.” Greg Oosterbaan – foreword to The Bonninghausen Repertory by George Dimitriadis 2000