Medizin, Gesellschaft, und Geschichte : Jahrbuch des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung
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Biography Historical Article
[Hahnemann's youngest patients - an analytic study of the first homeopathic treatments for children].
This article develops a fragmentary history of early homeopathic treatment of children. It begins with an outline of Samuel Hahnemann's perception and treatment of children during the "Medical Enlightenment". This is followed by an investigation of attitudes towards children in early homeopathic literature, in comparison to those of mainstream medicine of the period. ⋯ In response to Hahnemann's queries, many letters contain exact description of somatic and psychic symptoms. Unlike Hahnemann's brief style, many of the parents delve into each detail of the child's condition, and also express themselves emotionally on subjects such as their children, fears of sickness and death. It is also apparent that women, who bore the main responsibility for family life, had a good deal of authority over the course of treatment, as well as the choice of physician.
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Biography Historical Article
[The experience of being ill and the physician-patient relationship in Samuel Hahnemann's correspondence with his patients].
This paper uses on the extensive patient correspondence of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann as the basis for a history of homeopathy from the patients' point of view. The value of these epistolary records is two-fold: first, in order to produce their daily records as requested by Hahnemann, the patients learned to pay attention even to the slightest physical or emotional changes. ⋯ Second, the letters and Hahnemann's answers, as far as they have survived, provide detailed insights into the relationship between the physician and his patients. They help identify, in particular, the strategies used by Hahnemann to maintain his professional dignity, a good level of income, and his patients' trust - even through years of treatment without improvement. The letters also record the patients' response to Hahnemann's unusually authoritarian manners.
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Historical Article
[Homeopathy and the clergy: the portrait of a relationship].
This study traces the attraction that 19th century homeopathy exerted on clergymen of all three major Christian denominations, an appeal which is evidenced by the extensive homeopathic activities of clerical healers and missionaries. Practical considerations, such as the relatively easy acquisition of basic therapeutic skills, combined with and reinforced philosophical and religious preferences for a healing systm that stressed the unique properties of the body and the spiritual force of healing and remedies. The use of homeopathy enabled the clergy, as professional experts in the realm of the supernatural and immaterial, to refute the prevailing "mechanistic" and "materialistic" trends in contemporary academic medicine. Accordingly, some of the clergy arrived at striking syncretisms, supplementing homeopathy with sympathetic or religious healing methods.
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Historical Article
The homoepathic management of cholera in the nineteenty century with special reference to the epidemic in London, 1854.
During the nineteenth century homoeopaths claimed better results than their conventional colleagues did for the treatment of epidemic cholera. Those of the London Homoeopathic Hospital in 1854 have been put forward, for 150 years, as evidence of the efficacy of homoeopathy. ⋯ Failure to inflict exhausting allopathic treatments must have contributed considerably to the homoeopathic success. However it appears probable that the homoeopathic remedies themselves played an active part in the successful treatment of cholera cases.
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Historical Article
[The reception of homoeopathy among Polish physicians in the 19th century].
The 19th century Polish academic community showed a consistently negative attitude towards the Hahnemannian doctrine. On the other hand, homoeopathy spread more and more widely in Polish society. Popular homoeopathic journals and advisory literature expressed scepticism towards science and materialism or adopted viewpoints close to spiritualism. ⋯ The reception of homoeopathy in Poland was nevertheless limited. The doctrine was commonly known nowhere near as popular as the medical self-help that derived from what is called traditional "folk medicine". Also homoeopathy never was a serious competitor to the therapeutic arsenal of late 19th century academic medicine.