Georg August Benjamin Schweikert

Georg August Benjamin Schweikert

Georg August Benjamin Schweikert (born September 25, 1774 in Ankuhn , † December 15, 1845 in Breslau ) was a German physician and pioneer of homeopathy .

Life

Georg August Benjamin Schweikert was the eldest son of Benjamin Gottfried Schweikert, pastor at the time, and Johanne Christine Richter, the daughter of Zörbig pastor Georg Gottfried Richter. He came from an old evangelical pastor's family. As was customary at the time, he had received his first lessons from his father and attended the Bartholomew School in Zerbst. In 1792 he went to the cathedral school in Magdeburg , where he received his diploma on September 22, 1794 after teaching the general subjects of the general basic sciences. He continued his education on October 8, 1794 at the Illustre Zerbst high school . It was clear to Schweikert early on that he wanted to devote himself to studying. As early as December 3, 1793, he had himself deposited in the registers of the University of Göttingen , where he seems to have studied initially even after his Zerbster training.

Because on April 4, 1795, a matriculation entry at the University of Wittenberg shows that he continued his education there as a student. In Wittenberg he seems to have only continued his basic philosophical education in order to acquire the necessary tools for studying medical sciences. At the end of 1795 he went to Jena, where he found accommodation with Justus Christian Loder and enrolled in the matriculation of the University of Jena on May 11, 1796 . Here Schweiker devoted himself to studying medical sciences with Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland . Four years later, Schweiker received his license to practice medicine on August 15, 1799, and received his doctorate in medicine on October 5, 1799 with the paper De pollutionibus . He then practiced in Zerbst. In 1801, personal reasons, on advice from Hufeland and Loder, moved him to Wittenberg, which is not far away.

In Wittenberg he participated in the improvement of obstetrics, for which help he received from the Wittenberg Mayor Dr. Johann Benjamin Thomä had been asked. On December 4, 1801 Schweikert completed his habilitation with the treatise Argumenta quaedam, quae pro solvendis arte secundinis proferri solent , which dealt with the artificial release of afterbirths. As a private lecturer, he worked in midwifery training and in 1802 became a city coach. As such, he had to be at the side of the midwives and support them as a doctor during complicated birth processes. On November 14, 1806 he was a candidate for the city council of Supernumerarius and on February 2, 1807 he was accepted into the Wittenberg city council. As such, he initiated the construction of a new city hospital in 1808, which, however, only existed for a short time from 1813 to 1814.

Schweikert had started to become active as an author in Wittenberg. In 1802 he published the book Happy Healing of the Rose for Newborn Children and the treatise An Opiate Poisoning on the First Day of Life. Healed by D. Schweickert. This was followed in 1805 in the Journal for Surgery, Obstetrics and Forensic Medicine with his essay Observation of a hydrops hydatidosus in addition to the opening of the corpse . It was precisely the fate he experienced during the coalition wars that forced him to leave Wittenberg. Wittenberg, then a Saxon city, fell into the hands of Prussia from the French allies. Schweikert became director and senior physician of the Wittenberg military hospital in 1812, where he had to treat a large number of mainly French soldiers. The university was outsourced and the city itself was affected by the military conflict. Private reasons may also have been the decisive factor in leaving Wittenberg and going to Grimma on July 17, 1814.

In Grimma he found a new field of activity on August 8, 1814 as a school doctor at the Princely School there and was appointed city ​​physician in Grimma on December 29 of the same year . In this function he was committed to improving the local medical facilities. In Grimma in 1820, Schweikert began to work on homeopathic research by Samuel Hahnemann , with whom he came into contact. In the years 1826 to 1830, at Hahnemann's suggestion, Schweikert wrote a total of four booklets of the materials on a comparative doctrine of remedies for use by homeopathically healing doctors, along with an alphabetical register on the positive effects of the remedies on the various individual organs of the body and on the functions same . These booklets practically represented one of the first presentations of Hahnemann's Reiner drug theory . However, they received little recognition because they were awkwardly written.

In 1828 the essay Aphoristic Reflections appeared in Ernst Stapf's archive for the homeopathic art of healing , which arose from comparing the allopathic procedure with the homeopathic method at the bedside , which shows to what extent Schweikert is already moving in the practical application of homeopathy. One of the fruits of the collaboration with Hahnemann was the newspaper of natural law healing in 1829 , which served as a newspaper for the association founded at that time for the promotion and training of homeopathic healing . On September 1, 1830, he resigned from his medical duties as a school doctor in Grimma, but stayed there for another three and a half years. During that time he participated in the organizational tasks of the association. Although Hahnemann would have liked to see Schweikert as the founding rector of the homeopathic hospital on January 22nd, 1833 in Leipzig, Schweikert remained in his Grimma position.

After the disputes in the homeopaths camp had largely calmed down and Moritz Wilhelm Müller had resigned as director of the Leipzig clinic, Schweikert was elected as director of the homeopathic clinic in September 1833. At the end of 1833 he left Grimma to take up his new position on January 1, 1834 in the Johannesvorstadt district of Leipzig at Glockenstrasse 1. In the 25-bed clinic at the time, Schweikert initially had to struggle with personal problems, which were soon resolved. He changed the treatment style of his predecessor and started to make structural changes there. Through the economic streamlining of the administration, he almost achieved a financially self-sufficient situation for the institution.

However, on August 10, 1834, the homeopathic association disbanded for a period of one year, with which an elementary source of money for the clinic dried up. In addition, his sponsor Hahnemann moved to Paris in 1835, which openly revealed the hostilities of his colleagues against him. As a result, envy and resentment increasingly assumed grotesque forms of allegation against him. Schweikert therefore took action at the homeopathy congress on August 10, 1835 in Braunschweig and announced his resignation. Officially, he cited private problems as the reasons for them, which did not allow him to exercise the office of director of the Leipzig Homeopathic Clinic. After he had contractually filled his position by the end of the year, he went to Breslau in the spring of 1836.

Schweikert, who had been a member of the Lausitz Association of Homeopathic Doctors since 1832 and was an honorary member since 1833, and of the Société de médecine homéopathique in Paris in 1834, found a suitable environment in Wroclaw in Silesia to set up his own homeopathic practice in April 1836. Here he gained a certain reputation and achieved further recognition of homeopathy through his treatments. He continued to treat patients well into old age, until a stroke ended his life on December 15, 1845 at 3 p.m. He found his final resting place in the St. Christopher's cemetery, which has now disappeared and whose parish he had belonged to in the last years of his life. The tombstone donated by his friends contained, in addition to his life data, his motto Malurim offendere veris, quam placere adulando (I would rather offend the sincere than be flattered).

Act

Schweikert had lived in a time when homeopathy was viewed very suspiciously. It did not correspond to the scientific knowledge of his time and was also very doubted by the medical practitioners of his time. When they condemned homeopathy, they often stated that it was all about poisons that were used to heal people. Even at that time, however, Paracelsus' saying was neglected: All things are poison and nothing is without poison. The dose alone makes a thing not a poison . The successes that Schweikert achieved with his treatment method remained in the background. Rather, one demonized his statements. Nevertheless, many suspicious people found their way to him and his colleagues.

Because he had looked for a quick and gentle way in homeopathy, which could be operated with very little expenditure of money and time. He often had to defend his point of view personally against uninspired contemporaries. Schweikert saw his job as a real calling, so that the well-being of the patient always came first. These unselfish endeavors found consideration only in later times. Today, modern microbiological research has shown the extent to which elementary particles or enzymes docking in cells can behave. This is why homeopathic treatments are becoming more and more popular and have a permanent place in the field of pharmacology.

family

Schweikert was married three times.

The son Gustav comes from his marriage to Rosine Wilhelmine Frederike Sophia Stier (1774 - January 8, 1801), widow of the court surgeon Johann Valentin Heinrich Köhler (* December 10, 1800 in Zerbst; † December 12, 1800 there).

He concluded his second marriage on January 2, 1803 in Wittenberg with Henriette Giese (1778-1845), the daughter of the Wittenberg city council and later mayor Christian Friedrich Giese. The well-known Julius Schweikert (1807–1876) and the daughter Agnes (1806–1835), who later married the postal secretary Steude from Torgau, came from the marriage.

After the divorce from his second wife, he married Christine Wilhelmine Spilke on April 9, 1815 in Albrechtshain, previously married Breslau from Rothenburg / Saale. The son Johann Gustav Schweikert (born January 3, 1816 in Grimma) and the daughter Anna Thekla (born April 19, 1817 in Grimma) descended from this marriage .

literature

• August Hirsch , Ernst Julius Gurlt : Biographical lexicon of the outstanding doctors of all times and peoples. 5th volume, Urban and Schwarzenberg, Berlin 1887, p. 322.
• Anke Dörges: The homeopath family Dr. Schweikert. Karl F. Haug Verlag, Stuttgart, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8304-7275-9 .

Web links

• english biography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Benjamin Gottfried Schweikert (born March 15, 1736 in Klieken; † January 30, 1803 in Ankuhn-Zerbst), January 20, 1757 University of Wittenberg, was Vice-Rector of the Bartholomäus School in 1769, Pastor Ankuhn in 1771. 1772 with Johanna Christina Richter (born June 14, 1752 in Zörbig-1829); his father Benjamin Schweikert (born September 12, 1690 in Danzig; † June 13, 1765 in Dahnsdorf) academic high school Danzig, May 22, 1716 Uni Wittenberg (cf. Fritz Juntke: Album Academiae Vitebergensis - Younger Series. Max Niemeyer; Halle (Saale ), 1966, part 3, p. 435), ordained December 25, 1719 as adjunct in Klieken, 1725 pastor Klieken, 1740 pastor Dahnsdorf near Belzig, married. 1721 with Sophie Elisabeth Perl, daughter of the Wittenberg court and treasurer at the University of Johann Gottfried Perl (cf. Herrmann Graf: Anhaltinisches Pfarrerbuch. The Protestant pastors since the Reformation. Regional Church Council of the Evangelical Church of Anhalt, Dessau, 1996, p. 428 f.)
2. ↑ Georg Gottfried Richter (born June 5, 1705 in Reichenbach / Vogtland; † April 11, 1782 in Zörbig) son of the Reichenbach pastor Georg Richter (1658–1737) and his wife Johanna Marie Pinkert, attended high school in Zwickau from 1719–1724, then from May 8, 1725 (cf. Otto Köhler: Die Matrikel der Universität Jena. Verlag VEB Max Niemeyer, Halle (Saale), 1969, p. 44 SomSem. 1725 No. 280) the university. Jena and in 1727 the university. Leipzig (-1730), he acquired the Baccalaurat in Leipzig in 1728 and the philosophical master's degree on February 24, 1729, his first theol. He passed his exams in Dresden on September 21, 1735, he found a position as a substitute in Oschatz on September 12, 1735, was ordained on October 14, 1735, completed his second theological exam on May 29, 1737 in Leipzig, then went on to become a student in 1737 Pastor to Behlitz and from June 28, 1741 to the end of his life, he was chief pastor in Zörbig, from his marriage to Christine Dorothee Teichmann, the daughter of the pastor in Hohenleina Christian Teichmann, on April 16, 1738 in Hohenleina, five children have the above named daughter and the later professor of medicine in Göttingen August Gottlieb Richter (born April 13, 1742 in Zörbig; † July 23, 1812 in Göttingen) should be mentioned here. (Cf. Veronika Albrecht-Birkner : Pastor's Book of the Church Province of Saxony. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 2008, ISBN 978-3-374-02139-0 , Volume 7, p. 157)
3. ↑ Johann Benjamin Thomä came from Wermsdorf, he enrolled at the university on June 25, 1766 and studied medical sciences, especially pharmacology. After he had acquired the academic degree of Doctor of Medicine on April 18, 1767, he also completed the degree of Master of Philosophy on April 30, 1767, he then worked as a doctor and pharmacologist in Wittenberg, in the matriculations he is listed as Professor officinae pharmaceuticae. Since he was unable to initiate his own pharmacy in Wittenberg, he established a pharmacy in Kemberg in 1778 (cf. Wolfgang Böhmer, Andreas Wurda: Das Heilkundige Wittenberg. Drei Kastanien Verlag, Wittenberg, 2009, p. 135). According to the Wittenberg city files, he became a council member on January 28, 1772, and mayor on January 14, 1795 (see also Max Senf extended Kettner: Ratskollegio ... in evangelical preachers' seminar and Wittenberg city archives) and he died on March 10, 1802, after a serious illness Illness, at the age of 59 (see Wittenberg Wochenblatt, 1802, p. 79)
4. ↑ Adolph Carl Peter Callisen: Medicinisches Writer Lexicon of the now living doctors, surgeons, obstetricians, pharmacists, and naturalists of all educated peoples. Copenhagen, 1833, 17th vol. (San-Sel), p. 433 (online)
5. ↑ Christian Friedrich Giese was admitted to the Wittenberg city council on March 13, 1779, became mayor on September 18, 1810, resigned from office in 1813 and † May 20, 1825 in Wittenberg (cf. extended Kettner v. Max Senf. Im Protestant seminary, or adult Kettner in the city archive and Wittenberg council files)