Med Ges Gesch. 1999 ; 18(): 169-88.

[The experience of being ill and the physician-patient relationship in Samuel Hahnemann's correspondence with his patients]

Stolberg M.

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. No other contemporary source from allopathic medicine provides similarly detailed and dense data on the very physical perception of the body and its illnesses. 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.