Samuel hahnemann

Samuel Hahnemann was a German physician who established a new system of medical treatment call homeopathy. He spoke many languages and supported himself as a translator while studying medicine, graduating in 1779.

Hahnemann became convinced that many medical treatments such as bloodletting did more harm than good, and looked for gentler ways to treat patients. He was one of many physicians in the 1700s who set out to explore systematically the use and effects of medical drugs.

Hahnemann suggested testing the effects of drugs on the healthy human body in order to obtain secure knowledge of a drug's effects. Following self-experimentation with the antimalarial drug quinine, Hahnemann noted that the drug had a similar effect to the illness it was supposed to cure - in a healthy person, a dose of quinine caused a fever. From this, Hahnemann developed the central idea of homeopathic medicine: the principle of 'like cures like' or the 'law of similars' - an idea that was also central to folk medicine.

When Edward Jenner introduced vaccination in 1798, Hahnemann considered this a confirmation of his principle. Hahnemann also came to assume that the body was highly sensitive to drugs during illness, and prescribed very small doses of drugs - hence the expression ‘homeopathic doses’ for very small amounts.

Homeopathy spread rapidly through Europe in the early 1800s. //1200 The first homeopathic hospital opened in 1832 in Leipzig. However, homeopathy also met with hostility from apothecaries and other medical practitioners. In 1835, Hahnemann moved to Paris, where he was a popular practitioner until his death.

Edward jenner

Edward Jenner was an English country doctor who introduced the vaccine for smallpox. Previously a keen practitioner of smallpox inoculation, Jenner took the principle a stage further by inducing immunity against this killer disease via exposure to a harmless related disease, cowpox. His technique provided safer and more reliable protection than traditional inoculation.

Working in an agricultural community, Jenner knew of the country folklore that milkmaids never caught smallpox. They were known for their relatively flawless complexions, which were unmarked by smallpox scarring. However, they inevitably caught cowpox through their close work with cows. Jenner speculated that a bout of cowpox produced immunity against smallpox and even encountered locals who claimed to have deliberately infected themselves to provoke such a response. As a forward-thinking doctor who liked to experiment, Jenner wanted to prove his theory. In 1796 he inserted pus taken from Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid with cowpox, into a cut made in the arm of a local boy, James Phipps. Several days later, Jenner exposed the boy to smallpox. He was found to be immune.

Jenner called his new method ‘vaccination’ after the Latin word for cow (vacca). But Jenner had no explanation for why this method worked - no-one could see the virus with the microscopes of the time. He submitted a paper to the Royal Society the following year. //1200 It was met with some interest but further proof was requested. Jenner proceeded to vaccinate and monitor several more children, including his own son. The full results of his study were published in 1798, but his apparent discovery was met with much opposition, and even ridicule. In 1853, 30 years after Jenner’s death, smallpox vaccination was made compulsory in England and Wales.