HAHNEMANN, SAMUEL, founder of the system of medicine called Homosopathy, was born at Ideiesseu, in Upper Saxony, on the 10th of April 1755. Ilis father, Gottfried Hahnemanu, who was an artist of considerable merit, was employed in the painting of china in the celebrated porcelain manufactory of Meissen. He was a clever well educated man, and to him his son owed the first rudiments of his education. lie was afterwards placed at an elementary school, the director of which, Dr. Millar, remarking talents that only required cultivation to raise the boy to eminence, persuaded hie father to place him at the High School of Moieseu, iuto which they obtained him a free admission. Hahnemann gladly availed himself of these increased facilities; he made himself master of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and evinced a decided bias for the study of the physical sciences, natural history, and medicine. Botauy was also a favourite pursuit, and his hours of leisure were devoted to the collection of plants and their systematic arrangement. His Intense application and amiable dispo sition won the goodwill of the head master and teachers, who vied with each other in affording him every facility in the prosecution of his studies; and his progress was so rapid, that in a short time he was appointed an assistant teacher.
Having chosen medicine for his profession, at the commencement of 1775 he left the High School of Meissen, and, assisted by the friend ship of his former teachers, he entered the University of Leipzig, having, as a candidate, written a Latin thesis on the construction of the human hand.
Being wholly dependent upon his own exertions for subsistence, he supported himself during his residence at Leipzig by giving lessons in German to foreign students and by the translation of English and French medical authors. The professors of the university, in admira tion of his zeal for knowledge and great acquirements, invited him to attend their lectures gratuitously. Having passed two years in the study of the theory of medicine, and saved a small sum of money, he departed for Vienna, there being no clinical lecturer in the University of Leipzig. and entered himself at the Hospital of Charitable Brothers,
with a view to the completion of his studies and to acquiring a practical knowledge of his profession.
His moderate pecuniary resources were almost exhausted, when his talents and marked attention to his duties gained for him n firm friend in Dr. Qua:in, physician to the emperor of Austria and chief physician to the hospital, through whose recommendation, although he had not yet graduated, Hahnemann obtained the situation of family medical attendant and librarian to Baron von Briickenthal, governor of Sieben Liirgen, then residing at Hermannstadt. He remained here for two years, and being allowed to attend private practice saved a small sum of money ; with this he removed to Erlangen, where, on the 10th of August 1779, he took his degree of M.D.. and produced his thesis 'Conspectus Adfectuum Spasmodicorum Etiologicus et Therapeutirus.' In the year 1781 he was appointed district physician at Gomern, near Magdeburg. where he married the daughter of an apothecary named Kohler. Previous to this he had resided some time at Hettetadt and Dessau, diligently pursuing, in addition to his professional labours, the studies of chemistry and mineralogy.
In the year 1784 ho removed to Dresden, where he gained a high reputation in the hospitals as a judicious and skilful practitioner,but, struck with the absence of a guiding principle in therapeutics, and the great uncertainty of the healing art, he gradually withdrew him self as much as possible from practice, and endeavoured to support his family by his old resource of translations of English and French medical authors, pursuing at the same time his favourite study of chemistry.
During this period he published his pamphlets on 3lercurins Solu bills ; on the mode of detecting Adnheration in Wine; on Calcarea Sulphurata ; and on the Detection of Arsenic in cases of Poisoning : he also contributed many papers to Crell's 'Chemical Annals,' aud gave to the world a number of minor medical works, which have since been collected by Dr. Stapf and published under the title of Kleine Schriften,' Dresden and Leipzig, 1829.