[Alchemy, freemasonry and homeopathy]. / Alchimie, franc-maçonnerie et homéopathie.

In this article we are showing that homeopathic doctrine has really esoteric and occult origins as it was suspected by a few authors, nevertheless we saw Hahnemann also using scientific writers. As early as twenty-two years old Hahnemann was initiate in the freemasonry, very in vogue at that time. He will be life long attached to it and will keep close to distinguished freemasons. Freemasonry has conveid enlightement philosophical ideas as well as occult, alchemical and theosophical ones by successive incursion of very different orders. Among these we can find a few rosicrucians orders. At the beginning of 17th century in Germany, the first rosicrucians authors appealed to Paracelse, and the first members of their legendary fraternity manifested their contempt for the practice of transmutation into gold and must devote themselves to gratuitous medical practice (famous utopia). Freemasonry took again these philanthropic views so that Hahnemann was certainly involved to the ideas of Paracelse and his followers through the Rosicrucians which played a substantial part within freemasonry before homeopathy rose.

[Little histories of magnetic cures]. / Petite histoire des remèdes magnétiques.

Men were very early fascinated by magnetism because of its manifest and particular working at distance, which looked different of gravity. It was tryed to be explained by mecanism, for exemple Descartes and Boyle. Paracelse valued the therapeutics with magnets and conceived medicines as working by a magnetic virtue. Gilbert limited the medicinal properties of magnet but helded it to be animated. Many authors praised remedies that work at distance of the evil as Bacon, Van Helmont, Croll, Porta, Goclenius, Digby. Such a belief related to magic ideas of this time. In the Bacon's way Boyle collected facts of magnetic cures, and his actual testing of the divisibility of bodies led him to conceive imponderable corpuscles. Newton supposed a subtil and universel fluid going through every solid body. Mesmer misappropriated this idea by founding the animal magnetism of which physical working was only proceeding from the inside of the patient by an effect of suggestion (psychosomatic). Homeopathy took again the notion of remedies having an infinite or a magnetic virtue, which partly issued from Paracelse's and Mesmer's doctrines, which were extolled in Germany at the time of Hahnemann. The latter decided in favour of a spiritualist and not corpuscular interpretation of the working of his homeopathic medicines.

[Homeopathy and philosophy]. / Homéopathie et philosophie.

We are studying here the philosophical evolution of the homeopathy's inventor, Hahnemann, and the impact of philosophy on the foundation of his doctrine. As far back as 1777 he was, by studying medicine, introduced to animism through two critical Stahl's followers, Platner et Whytt, and to the vitalism of Montpellier's faculty. To found his theory he used the concept of "reaction" of living body on the body acting on it, that we can find as well in the nervous theory of animists as by vitalists like Hufeland, or by more mecanists thinkers like Haller and Cullen, and that corresponds to different representations of Nature medicatrix. As far back as 1801 Hahnemann imagined some morbid causes and medicinal actions as dynamic and immateriel. He will finally conceive the living being in the same way than the vitalists of Montpellier's school, and will adopt, from the Organon's second edition (1819), an immaterial conception of vital force. Nevertheless he distinguishs himself of this school by supporting from the same time the dynamic and immateriel nature of every morbid cause. His doctrine then became more and more spiritualistic and incoherent enough because his recognizing of something immateriel and sprirituel into the matter itself, even out of a living being, which makes us also suppose any esoteric or theosophical sources or influences on his doctrine.

[Hufeland (1762-1836) and homeopathy]. / Hufeland (1762-1836) et l'homéopathie.

In 1796 homeopathy was born by the publication of an Hahnemann's article in a periodic founded by C. W. Hufeland, a German physician, Professor in Iena, who was friendly with Hahnemann during more of thirty years. This periodic, which defended the experimental philosophy and was devoted to the practical medicine, will be nevertheless the mean instrument to spread Hahneman's ideas until the issue of the Organon in 1810. Also, the thought of Hahneman looks us as built up itself partly in large connection with the ideas of this review, and probably still more with the Hufeland's writings. The prolix author Hufeland published in 1795, 1796, and 1800, at the same time of homeopathy's foundation, three main works that Hahnemann has certainly distinguished. Between 1825 and 1830, Hufeland tried to put himself as an unprejudiced judge of the attacked homeopathy. His pleading, as well as his straight critical remarks is an authentic and right enough testimony, only made a little false by the state of medicine in these days. He put up the controversy at least so high as the today's polemics.