HAHNEMANN

The author of Dunant, First Papers, with a reliable biography of the father of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, who lived at a time when medical science was largely ignorance, coincidence and hope (1780), who was to reject the accepted theories and treatments of the era, and in spite of ignominy and poverty pursued an independent path. Experimenting continually, deriving his own cures from herbal and mineral sources, Hahnemann failed to build up a practice in his various migratory moves, spent his time researching and writing. He married Henriette who was to produce eleven children. He fought professional dogma persistently. Finally after years of investigation and the testing of his medicines he produced his Organon which contained the doctrine of homeopathy. Increased fame, antagonism, years of controversies and setbacks, finally after the death of Henriette -- his marriage at 80 to a pretty Parisian of thirty odd who surrounded him with affection and adulation for his last years. I question the interest in homeopathy today -- however this is a sound and solid piece of work.