Similia Vol 36 No 2 – December 2023
Author: Peter Morrell
Abstract
At the age of fifty, ‘Hahnemann first began to collect the fruits of his scientific work in the form of some embracing writings … in the Fragmenta, which is composed in Latin, he presents the results of his years of drug provings performed on himself and family.’
‘Hahnemann’s Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis … gives us, for the first time, an insight into the remarkable, and so far unknown, methods of investigation which he employed. It supplies reports on the tests of twenty-seven medicines – the results of years of experiment on himself and his family.’
‘The Fragmenta … Part I. contains the symptoms arranged carefully. Part II. is the Index, or Repertory. He gives the symptoms produced by drugs on the healthy, and at the end of each remedy gives the effects recorded by previous observers in cases of poisoning.’
This article explores the contents of Hahnemann’s first book of provings, which has been largely eclipsed by his later great works and thus neglected for so long. ‘In 1805 Hahnemann published a very important book in two parts … the first collection ever made of provings of medicines upon the healthy body.’ Hopefully, the reader will begin to appreciate the unfathomable genius of the man who compiled it from the self-poisoning experiments he conducted on himself, his wife and their children: ‘for the sake of his research he risked his own health and even his life, the health and life of his own children.’