April 10th is the 254 birthday of Dr. Hahnemann

Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, M.D. (10th April 1755 - 2nd July 1843)

Hahnemann was among the first to apply scientific principles to the study of pharmacology and his legacy includes many practices that we now take for granted in medicine, including reducing dosage to a level that is less toxic yet still curative, testing the effects of drugs on groups of healthy persons to determine toxicity rather than just relying on clinical anecdotes, and limiting treatment to one medicine at a time. He was also an early proponent of hygiene and sanitation, and diet and exercise as bulwarks against disease and among the first to treat mental illness as a disease rather than a failure in morality.

Dr. Hahnemann was the primogenitor of several modern medical approaches. He held that, the treatment of insane patients is cruel and harmful and advised a humane treatment for the insane. He cured several insane patients with homeopathy, and gained popularity then on. He quickly discerned that poor hygiene was an essential contributor in causing the spread of diseases. His success with cholera and typhoid fever was in part due to this recognition. Hahnemann also accented on the importance of nursing, diet, bed rest, and isolation of patients during epidemic diseases. He described `Noxious` principles as the precursors of certain disease states.

Hahnemann`s three major publications highlight the development of homeopathy. In the Organon of Medicine (revised six times), he brushes up with the fundamentals. In Materia Medica Pura, he illuminates the exact symptoms of remedy provings. In his book, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure, he demonstrates how the natural diseases become chronic in nature when, suppressed by improper treatment.

Dr. Hahnemann treated thousands of difficult and chronic cases that defied the best care from Allopaths all over Europe. His popularity fanned out to such an extent that physicians from Europe and America came to him to discern the new science and art of healing, called `Homeopathy`.

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