Versuch über ein neues Prinzip zur Auffindung der Heilkräfte der Arzneisubstanzen (1796 essay)
period journal · 1796
SUMMARY
Hahnemann's first published statement of the homeopathic principle and the origin point of the doctrine. In this 1796 essay he proposed that a substance which produces a set of symptoms in a healthy person can cure a disease marked by similar symptoms, the rule later compressed to similia similibus curentur ('like cures like'), generalizing from his self-experiment with cinchona (Peruvian bark). The English title 'Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs' and the 1796 date are taken from Loudon's history (J R Soc Med 2006, separate source entry). The original German title (Versuch über ein neues Prinzip zur Auffindung der Heilkräfte der Arzneisubstanzen) and the publication venue, Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland's Journal der practischen Arzneykunde und Wundarzneykunst, are documented in Haehl's biography (Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work, 1922, separate source entry). The exact volume and part within the 1796 journal run could not be confirmed against a scan and are therefore not stated. The venue is the same journal in which Hufeland published Kant's open letter on macrobiotics, which links this case to the Hufeland macrobiotics case.
NOTES
This essay is where homeopathy begins as a published doctrine. Hahnemann had taken regular doses of cinchona bark (the source of quinine) and reported that it produced in him symptoms resembling the intermittent fever the bark was used to treat; from this he inferred a general therapeutic rule, that a drug capable of producing a symptom-picture in the healthy is the drug to cure a disease showing the like symptom-picture. The 1796 essay states this new principle. It precedes by fourteen years the systematic exposition in the Organon der rationellen Heilkunde (1810). The English title and year are from Loudon (2006); the German title and the journal venue (Hufeland’s Journal der practischen Arzneykunde und Wundarzneykunst) are documented in Haehl’s 1922 biography. The exact volume and part are not asserted here because they could not be confirmed against a journal scan. The venue is notable for this archive: it is the periodical founded and edited by Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, the subject of the macrobiotics case, so the founding text of homeopathy appeared in the leading German medical journal of the day.