INTRODUCTION

This is no ordinary love story. The combined lives of Samuel and Melanie Hahnemann achieved a total length of 167 years, far too great a period to be covered satisfactorily in one short book. Samuel Hahnemann lived from 1755 to 1843 and Melanie from 1800 to 1878; they lived through one of the richest and most exciting cen-turies in European culture. This book focusses on their life together, the nine years from 1834 to 1843 when, having met and married, this unlikely couple established a homeopathic practice in the centre of Paris and for this period made homeopathy one of the chief resorts of fashionable society and an influence on the developing medicine of Europe.

The life of Samuel Hahnemann up to this period has been well documented, so this narrative does not dwell on the details of his biography but tries to set it in a context which explains how, when well past his allotted span, he could fall in love with a young Parisian artist and extend his life so brilliantly. Very little, on the other hand, has hitherto been written about his young spouse. She was already an accomplished writer and artist when she met Hahnemann and gave up her career in the arts to marry him and to ‘study and prac-tise the new medicine to such effect that he called her the finest homeopath in Europe: this at a time when no woman in Europe had yet succeeded in working as a doctor of any kind. Melanie’s life is investigated in some detail.

The book documents the years of their joint practice in Paris, using their patients’ records, which have never been used before, to illuminate the details of an extensive homeopathic practice inthe middle of the nineteenth century and examine the patients, diseases and treatments of this section of Paris Society in the lazy days before the revolutions of 1848 changed some of the struc-tures of European social life for ever. It looks at the circumstances under which Melanie Hahnemann was ultimately brought to trial during a period of official persecution of alternative medical prac-titioners, and at her illegal and undercover practice of homeopathy in the years following the prosecution. It is a book about the lives and love of two quite remarkable people and about their mutual love for homeopathy, a remarkable system of medicine which is now finally coming to be recognised as a powerful curative force after a struggle lasting over 200 years against the entrenched prejudice of the orthodox.

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

The Meeting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

The Young Melanie ………………………. 1 7

Melanie, Poet and Artist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Samuel’s Early Life ……………………….. 49

Hahnemann Becomes a Homeopath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Hahnemann in Exile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Melanie and Samuel Arrive in Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Early Years in Paris ……………………… 105

How Did They Practise? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 1 1 7

Diseases and Treatments ………………….. 133

Parting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 1 47

he Trial of Melanie Hahnemann ………. . . . . .. 1 61

Melanie after Hahnemann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 1 73

Alone Again …………………………… 185

The End of the Story …………………….. 197

Notes ………………………………….. 213

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

Index ………………………………….. 243