Homoeopathic Experiments

Abstract

Dr Paul Siegmund Karl Preu was an avid homoeopath and jumped at the opportunity to test the theories of Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of this science and the author of the Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, who was then living in retirement in Koethen having been forbidden to practise since 1821. Hahnemann’s fundamental principle, which he published in 1810, was summed up in the Latin tag similia similibus curantur (like can be cured by like). Cures could be effected by minute dilutions of substances which produced a similar effect as the disease to be cured. It was thus a method analogous to vaccination — a practice that was still not universally accepted by the medical profession. Indeed at the time that Hahnemann published his Organon the principles of a scientific medical practice had yet to be agreed upon. It was not until mid-century that Hahnemann’s teaching found a substantial following, and thus Dr Preu was one of his earliest disciples. He saw his experiments on Kaspar Hauser as a triumphant vindication of Hahnemann’s ideas.¹