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250th anniversary

This weekend, supporters of homeopathy are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Hahnemann

  • Given the short nature of this article, as part of a series on famous people in CAM, I have to question that almost half of the article is spent on two rather unimportant issues related to his life's work - namely the reference to Dr. Quinn (why not mention all the others who started a hospital or introduced Hahnemann's system into their country?) and the reference to quarantine. What about some major contributions, such as that he was one of the first to talk about hygiene, the value of fresh air, sunshine, etc., that he fought for the purity of medicines in an age of adulteration, leading homeopaths everywhere to fight for better medical standards, such that in the US and Canada, for example, the homeopaths formed the first medical associations, which the AMA was formed to combat, or that he was a famous chemist and medical translator, his texts used throughout Germany, that he treated royalty, a tradition that continues with the British and Dutch royal families to this day? He was also a strong opponent of "heroic measures" drawing medicines attention back to the Hippocratic nil nocere.

Does anyone else feel this article really does Dr. Hahnemann a disservice? --Rudi 02:55, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

no not anymore, it has been improved in the past year a lot I can see from the history list Pernambuco 16:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Biography

I have added considerable biographical information, which User:Kungfuadam has deleted. Is there some reason why Hahnemann's biography should not be included in an article about him? I am restoring the information. Hgilbert 21:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

While the description of his work and the bibliography are splendid, the biography is woefully incomplete (cf. the German wiki, with a

clear separation of the various stations of his life).Dunnhaupt 23:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Bibliography

I do not understand the two sub headlines which say "Other works cont´d", please explain what this means, thank you. (I am Pernambuco and I have made many edits to the Classical homeopathy article. ) Pernambuco 01:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

request from the Classical homeopathy page

I am involved in a cleaning up process of the article Classical homeopathy but it is a lot of work, I could use help from others, if someone wants to help just go there, and I am also active on the Talks page with the user "Debbe" (a wiki-pedia friend of mine who helps there) so thank you in advance for your help with fixing that page Pernambuco 21:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Reputation as a scientist

Does this need to be so lengthy? It really has an air of desperately trying to prove Hahnemann's worth, and could really be about a third of the length without losing much actual information. It is skating over the edge of NPOV, in my opinion. It's even more ironic that that bumf leaves out one of Hahnemann's non-homeopathic achievements - that of discovering a test for arsenic that is still in use today. I'll add the bit about the arsenic test, and see if anyone has comments about the other glurge in the next month or so before I think of a way to edit to something resembling objective fact. Trxi 11:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

yes, I agree, and this is a problem that we have with other homeopathic related articles too, I am working on improving Classical homeopathy in this regards, so if you want to help I say thank you to you Pernambuco 13:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Ditto. I'm going to take a shot at condensing that section down a lot, it isn't really that relevant. Kupos 22:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Alright, I took a shot. I hope I haven't been overly harsh, but there really wasn't much there to salvage. The giant list of works he'd translated was not relevant at all, and the bit before that was just constant gushing praise, all from the one source. I kept the bit about the Marsh Test, since that seems to be verifiable and concrete. Kupos 22:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
o.k. well I like most of what you did, it is actually a much better page now, but I have a little concern, and it is that you also took some of the references/sources away. Well, I added one back in, so maybe now it is fine Pernambuco 02:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Seems good to me! Sorry if I did that, I might have been a bit overenthusiastic with my deleting. Kupos 18:32, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
you sir are an idiot who should be banned from wikipedia Peter morrell 21:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Woah, easy, easy. I'm not saying that any of this is true or untrue, it's just not encyclopaedic. It's more like an advertisement than a serious biography. The objective is to summarize the life of Hahnemann, not to interminably list reasons why he's wonderful. Articles on far more prominent and famous scientists are nowhere near as fawning. If you have any reason why this huge list should be kept, please post it here. I'll leave it in place for the moment to give you a chance to reply. Kupos 00:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Memorial (photo)

FYI, there is a CreativeCommons licensed photo of the Washington D.C. memorial described in this article: http://flickr.com/photos/bootbearwdc/23392385/. It might be worth uploading to wiki commons. --Georgeryp 05:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 08:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions

Here are some suggestions for improving the article.


  • Expand the intro. The intro should be a 'summary' of the entire article. One sentence is no where near enough.
  • Improve the flow of the article itself by removing quotes where they are not needed and paraphrasing them.
  • Format the "External links" section. All should contain bullets and the name of the link should be the name of the site. After that you can add a "short" explanation of what the link is.

Marsh test

However, the most common test (and used even today in water test kits) was discovered by Samuel Hahnemann. It would involve combining a sample fluid with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the presence of hydrochloric acid (HCl). A yellow precipitate, arsenic trisulfide (As2S3) would be formed if arsenic were present. Peter morrell 17:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

That's not the Marsh test (reaction results not stable). I'll figure a way to rewrite it, but a source would be useful. PouponOnToast (talk) 17:28, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is a reputable source but I don't have full access...maybe you can check it. Peter morrell 18:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Hahnemann's test for Arsenic is mentioned on page 202 of this book The Chemical News, Oxford Univ, 1860 which is also downloadable. Peter morrell 18:26, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think it is. Could you quote from your downloadable source? It appears that Hahnemann is used as a source of legal effacy, not chemical tests. PouponOnToast (talk) 18:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You can search for the word 'arsenic' on this text which is reputable if not RS. He definitely did pioneering work on arsenic in chemistry and as a poison. I can give published book sources that are not online. Peter morrell 18:37, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

On page 52 of Trevor Cook, Samuel Hahnemann Founder of Homeopathic Medicine, UK: Thorson's, 1982 he says "Hahnemann made an indirect contribution to chemistry in publishing a test for wine, which came to be officially adopted in Prussia and known as 'Hahnemann's Wine Test.'...to test for poisonous lead in wine...the basis of the test was the preciptation of the sulphides of lead, mercury, copper and tin by the addition of a solution of hydrogen disulphide (sic; it should be dihydrogen sulphide) gas dissolved in water." are we confusing this wine test with an arsenic test by Marsh?? Peter morrell 18:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Ref #9

This ref appears as 'Bradford, op cit' BUT in the html text it should say in an earlier ref: Thomas L Bradford, Life and Letters of Hahnemann, 1895...blah blah it appears in the html but is not visible in the article footnotes and I can't work out why...can anybody please correct this? thanks Peter morrell 20:19, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

This is where it appears: In the Spring of 1811 Hahnemann moved his family back to Leipzig with the intention of teaching his new medical... BUT the ref does not appear in the list. weird?? corrected. Peter morrell 20:26, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The problem was that when you re-use a ref eg <ref name=skaylarkbio/> you need the backslash each time you re-use it otherwise it isn't formatted as a separate reference. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Right, wonderful. Thanks, Tim! job done. Peter morrell 21:04, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Bad para

This paragraph: Hahnemann tested substances for the effect they produced on a healthy individual and tried to deduce from this the ills they would heal. From his research, he initially concluded that ingesting substances to produce noticeable changes in the organism resulted in toxic effects. He then attempted to mitigate this problem through exploring dilutions of the compounds he was testing. He claimed that these dilutions, when done according to his technique of succussion (systematic mixing through vigorous shaking) and potentization, were still effective in producing symptoms.However, these effects have never been duplicated in clinical trials,and his approach has been universally abandoned by modern medicine. is badly written, factually inaccurate and largely unsourced. I propose to try and improve it with better wording and good sources. Peter morrell 05:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Born 11 April, not 10 April

This tells us:

  • The baptismal register of Meissen contains the following record : (British Journal of Homeopathy, Vol. 13, p. 525): "Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, born on the morning of the 11th of April, of 1755; baptized the thirteenth day of April of the same year, by M. Junghanns. Father, Christian Gottfried Hahnemann, painter. Mother, Johanna Christiana, born Spiess." The worthy pastor, M. Junghannes, was of the Lutheran faith, and the infant was baptized on the Sabbath after its birth according to those tenets. The date of Hahnemann's birth has usually been given as the 10th, and not the 11th of April. The town register gives the 11th, and at the celebration at Meissen, in 1855, of the hundredth birthday, the 11th was the day selected.

On that basis, I'm changing the date. -- JackofOz (talk) 09:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

It is incorrect he was born 11.45pm on the 10th april. Bradford is NOT a reliable source of info on his life. Everyone else gives 10th check Haehl for example. Peter morrell 09:41, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree. According to some German books that are available on the web, Hahnemann celebrated his birthday on the 10th and also put the 10th into his autobiography. One source says that according to his daughters he was born around midnight. I think this would be consistent with "born on the morning of the 11th". Since both dates are arguably correct, it's best to go with the majority.
Or we could say explicitly "midnight 10th/11th". --Hans Adler (talk) 10:27, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, so we have dispute between reputable sources. When that happens, I think our job is not to "choose a winner" based on the majority opinion, but to state that we don't actually know precisely when he was born, and to report what the differing sources say. Some say it was 11:45 pm on the 10th; some say it was around midnight 10/11th; but the birth registration says it was "the morning of the 11th". I think the birth registration, being the primary source, deserves primacy, even if the majority of secondary sources disagree. We can say that, for example, his birth registration put it on the 11th and the town celebrated his centenary on 11 April 1855, but that Hahnemann himself claimed to have been born on the 10th and many secondary sources use that date. We should be aware that individuals are generally not the best source of information about their own births, particularly when it comes to births around midnight, because they were in no position to form an objective opinion about the time, and they had to rely totally on what they were told, years after the event, by their mothers, who in turn are usually not the best source of objective information because they had their mind on other things at the time.
We can't just assume it happened at the stroke of midnight. No births happen at precisely midnight, because no births happen at a precise moment in time, which is what midnight is. Births take more than a split-second to occur. Probably his mother went into labour on the 10th, and most of the labour occurred on the 10th. But births are dated at the conclusion of labour, not the start of labour, and we don't know exactly when it concluded. It was almost certainly either at least a second before midnight (10th April) or at least a second after (11th April). Even if, in the extreme case, the time-keeper looked at their watch and the second hand was exactly on 12.00:00 at the moment the baby popped out, that still means it was by now 11th April because midnight is the start of the new day, not the end of the previous day. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No, we do not have a dispute between RELIABLE sources, we have agreement across the board, except for Bradford, which is widely acknowledged as being NOT a reliable source. On that basis, YOU'RE POV pushing and your argument rests on a very flimsy basis. It is an incorrect fabrication. There is nothing more to say; he was born late 10th April. Peter morrell 05:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that's very fair, Peter. My sole interest is accuracy; I have no personal opinion one way or another. I aim to keep an open mind; those who attempt to close down discussions ("There is nothing more to say") might be more relevantly charged with having an inflexible point of view. I know that Misplaced Pages's threshold is verifiability, not truth, and that 10th April is certainly verifiable; but so is 11th April, and we can't just pretend that records supporting that date don't exist. www.suite101.com/article.cfm/homeopathy/90779 says something about the confusion:
  • On the 10th/11th April 1755 Samuel Christian Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Southeast Germany. The confusion in date arising as a result of him being born very close to the midnight hour: the church records show the date as the 11th; Hahnemann maintains it was the 10th!
As I said before, what Hahnemann believed is not significant. Hahnemann could only have been certain it was the 10th by being told second-hand by his mother, the doctor, the midwife, or someone else who was there. If this is the true date, how do we explain the official record showing the birth occurred on the 11th? What does Haehl say about the issue? -- JackofOz (talk) 06:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to have given that impression; I am not trying to close down a discussion. Maybe we can cite a source which says the date is disputed? I happen to know, having studied Hahnemann's life in depth for so long, that Bradford is NOT a reliable source and often gets things wrong. On that basis alone you cannot say he is a reliable source or take as gospel anything he says. That is the basis of my view. Haehl I will check for you, here you go: "the physicians of Saxony have claimed the 11th as his birthday, because it is thus entered in the church register of Meissen. But I have ascertained from Hahnemann's own daughter that he, Hahnemann, was actually born on April 10th at approximately twelve o'clock midnight. For this reason he celebrated his birthday, until the eighty-ninth year of his life, on the 10th of April. It would therefore be incorrect and unsuitable that on account of error, committed by a beadle one hundred years ago, it should be postponed. Every true follower of Hahnemann will celebrate it like his Master on the 10th." (Haehl, volume 1, p.9). I guess you will still continue to argue your case, but this is the most reliable source we have. Peter morrell 06:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No, that's absolutely fine in terms of putting the matter to rest as far as I'm concerned. We have a published statement that the official record was erroneous - end of story. Thanks for the ref. (I guess an Inspector Frost or a Hercule Poirot would still wonder how his daughter could be so certain of the true date, since she was not there at the birth, and the person she got the information from, her father, got the information second-hand himself. So one could argue that Haehl used only a third-hand source. But that's not for us to concern ourselves about at Misplaced Pages because we'd be getting away from verifiability and into scientific accuracy.) However, to save future debates, maybe we could include a footnote explaining why we think 11th April is wrong. -- JackofOz (talk) 08:06, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Great, that's a nice outcome. Someone can edit the above quote, or a variant of it, to a footnote of his birthdate, indicating that Bradford gets it wrong or at least that the date of his birth has been disputed by some folks, even in his own times, but that the predominant view is that he was born ~12 midnight of the 10th April. If I can find time to edit that into the text I will do it, maybe tomorrow. thanks Peter morrell 15:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Explanation of major edits

Hello, everyone. Thought I'd explain the rationale behind my major overhaul of the article. Much of the changes are structural and copy-editing revisions. I tried to even out the sections and got rid of some excessive use of quotations from primary sources. For the most part, I tried to just rephrase the information as it appeared in the text. I also tried to give a more intuitive explanation of homeopathy in the lead.

Perhaps more controversially, I deleted the "Achievements" section. My reasons for doing this are as follows:

1. First and foremost, this section does not represent a neutral point of view. It cites ten of Hahnemann's achievements ... solely as defined by Harald Gaier, a prominent follower of homeopathy. These "achievements" do not reflect any sort of consensus or recognition by the scientific or medical community and are purely sectarian hagiography (and many of them read as nonsense to me).

2. It is list-like which I believe violates Misplaced Pages's general style guidelines. Dennis Boocho (talk) 16:30, 7 November 2009 (UTC)Dennis Boocho

On first sight your changes look excellent to me. Thanks. I don't think deleting the Achievements section was controversial. It was added 5 days ago, and I guess most people watching this article felt it wasn't appropriate and weren't sure what to do about it. Just deleting it was a good option if there wasn't anything worth preserving. (I didn't bother to check that.) Hans Adler 17:08, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Samuel Hahnemann

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Samuel Hahnemann's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Ernst":

Reference named "Ernst2005":

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 22:30, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Hahnemann University Hospital

I'm not sure just where this info should go but, I think it's at least worth mentioning that Hahnemann University Hospital is named after him. "Hahnemann University Hospital, established in 1885 and named after Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, is a hospital in Center City, Philadelphia. It is affiliated with Drexel University College of Medicine and serves as its Center City Hahnemann campus." http://en.wikipedia.org/Hahnemann_University_Hospital Dryphi (talk) 17:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

We could add a wikilink to that article in a "See also" section. I'll do that for you. -- Brangifer (talk) 19:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Claims about Cholera are just plain wrong.

This edit reverted my changes and added even more bias by claiming the essay is "notable" (says who ?). I had asked if the previous editors had actually read his essay and I don't believe that they have because,

  • the word "pathogenic" is in double-quotes in our claims and so this means it is used in-line in the reference. It is not. Read the essay and hunt for the word "pathogenic" - it does not exist. Perhaps it is lost in translation ? The reference is in English though.
  • the second if the claim about the bacteriological source ...when in fact he is just re-iterating what was well known in public journals !. His full text is..."The most striking examples of infection and rapid spread of cholera take place, as is well known, and as the public journals likewise inform us, in this way:". He then goes on to describe the contents of those well known public journals and describes a vector which we know now to be dubious. At best he's a Texas Sharpshooter. At worst, well we know there is no scientific basis for any of his stuff so at best he's just re-phrasing existing texts. The significance of the 1831 essay is that he thinks doctors and nurses are the vector and that his camphor drops are the panacea. I'm reverting. Ttiotsw (talk) 20:13, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
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