After three years residence in Gommern, during which time he had married, he became tired of professional idleness—as he expresses himself—and we find him removing to Dresden. For about a year he occupied the position as superintendent of the public hospitals of that city. His conscience however, began to be much troubled by the conviction that medicine as then practiced proved worse than useless to the majority of patients. He retired from the practice of medicine in disgust at its uncertainties, occupying himself solely with chemistry and literary labor.
The humanity and integrity of Hahnemann is plainly portrayed in a letter to the venerable Hufeland, where he gives his own account of the reasons which induced him at this time to retire from practice. He writes:
"It was painful for me to grope in the dark, guided only by our books in the treatment of the sick—to prescribe according to this or that fanciful view of the nature of diseases, substances that only owed to mere opinion their place in the Materia Medica. I had conscientious scruples about treating unknown morbid states in my suffering fellow-creatures with these unknown medicines; which, being powerful substances, might, if they were not exactly suitable, (and how could the physician know whether they were suitable or not, seeing that their peculiar special actions were not yet elucidated?), easily change life into death, or produce new affections or chronic ailments, which are often much more difficult to remove than the original disease. To become in this way a murderer, or an aggravator of the sufferings of mankind, was to me a fearful thought. So fearful and distressing was it, that shortly after my marriage I abandoned the practice, and scarcely treated any one for fear of doing him harm."
In 1789, he settled in Leipzig, and numerous writings and translations, which have been often quoted by the best writers ever since, came from his pen during that period. We come now to the year 1790, in which the first thought of Homœopathy issued from the brain of the great father and founder of the new school of medicine. It has already been hinted that Hahnemann had felt an intense desire to obtain some clear, safe and philosophical guide to the therapeutic action of drugs.
He was called upon to translate "Cullen's Materia Medica," and as he progressed in the description of one medical substance after another, he could not but feel a renewal of the earnest longing he had so often cherished, to clear medical science from the clouds of mist and uncertainty in which it had continued from the time of Hippocrates.
The workings of his mind, and the character of the man, at this time will be best understood by a quotation from the letter he wrote to Hufeland, where he says:
"Having briefly reviewed, the sad experience of the systems of Sydenham and Hoffmann, of Boerhave and Glaubius, of Stahl, Cullen and de Hean," he continues,
"But it is, perhaps, the very nature of this art, as great men have asserted that it is incapable of attaining any greater certainty. Shameful, blasphemous thought! What! shall it be said that the infinite wisdom of the Eternal Spirit, that animates the universe, could not produce remedies to allay the sufferings of the diseases He allows to arise? The all-loving paternal goodness of Him, whom no name worthily designates, who richly supplies all wants, even the scarcely conceivable wants of the insect in the dust, imperceptible by reason of its minuteness to the keenest human eye, and who despenses throughout creation, life and happiness in rich abundance, shall it be said that He is capable of the tyranny of not permitting that man, made in his image, should by the efforts of his penetrating mind, that has been breathed into him from above, find out the way to discover remedies in the stupendous kingdom of creation, which should be able to deliver mankind from their sufferings, worse than death itself? Shall He, the Father of all, behold with indifference the martyrdom of his best-beloved creatures by disease, and yet render it impossible to the genius of man, to whom all else is possible, to find any method, any easy, sure, trust-worthy method, whereby they may see diseases from their proper point of view, and whereby they may interrogate medicines as to their special uses, as to what they are really, surely and positively serviceable for? Well, thought I, as there must be a sure and trust-worthy method of treatment, as certainly as God is the wisest and most beneficient of Beings, I shall seek it no longer in the thorny thicket of ontological explanations, *** nor in the authoritative declarations of celebrated men. No; let me seek it where it lies nearest at hand, and where it has hitherto been passed over by all, because it did not seem sufficiently recondite, nor sufficiently learned, and was not hung with laurels for those who displayed most talent for constructing systems, for scholastic speculation, and transcendental abstractions."
With these high and noble feelings, his mind was fully awake to any suggestion that might be derived from the material before him.
For forty years he carried on a series of well-planned and well-calculated experiments to ascertain the disease-producing power of drugs, when administered to persons in health. Friends, medical and lay, were brought into requisition, and all possible means taken to secure the greatest accuracy; for Hahnemann already began to feel that he was God's agent of mercy, through whose happy discovery and labors future generations would be greatly blessed.