Julius Hensel

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Julius Hensel

Julius Hensel (born July 11, 1833 in Küstrin , † June 12, 1903 in Hermsdorf unterm Kynast ) was a German chemist , pharmacist and doctor .

Life

The key biographical data on Julius Hensel are sparse. After completing school education, Hensel seems to have studied chemistry with Eilhard Mitscherlich and Heinrich Rose and later pharmacology and botany with Alexander Braun at the University of Berlin . According to his own vague information, he also began studying medicine in Switzerland in 1859, which he supposedly completed in 1890 after interruptions.

In contrast to the agrochemicals developed by Justus von Liebig , Hensel advocated mineral field fertilization with stone meal. His nutritional theory was based on a so-called "nutritional salt therapy" with which he distinguished himself from the homeopathic and "biochemical healing method" of Wilhelm Heinrich Schüßler . Hensel's theories - he also appeared as an opponent of vaccinations - were fiercely controversial from the start. His idea of ​​a balanced diet of plants with minerals was taken up again by later followers, but could never be scientifically confirmed. According to Elmar Ernst, Hensel built his nutritional salt therapy on his “consideration of the physiological processes in the human body, which also seemed confused for those times”.

In 1869, Hensel founded the Henselwerke nutrient salt factory in Stuttgart-Cannstatt for the manufacture and sale of nutrient, fertilizer salts and tonic lemonade, which set up depots in several German cities . The later company management advertised with the slogan "oldest nutrient salt factory". Shortly before his death, Hensel ceded the original recipes for his nutritional salts for humans and animals, as well as the publishing rights for his writings, to the successor to Henselwerke, the pharmacist Eugen Hänsler. The factory existed for decades and produced a. a. Soy products and skin creams.

Traces of a reception

As JW Teichel, the manufacturer Fritz Teichel (Physiological Nutrients Großsteinberg ) published several writings from around 1900 to the end of the 1920s, both by and in the sense of Hensel's nutrition theories. The follower of Hensel's biochemical nutrition theory, the general practitioner and homeopath Gustav Ernst Hugo Hartung (1868–1928), like Hensel living under the Kynast in Hermsdorf, wrote the foreword to the German translation of Alice Bunker Stockham's Karezza in 1897 . Ethies of Marriage under the title Reform Marriage. A means to increase the joy of existence and to ennoble the human race . He also mentioned Hensel in it.

The poet and writer Heinrich Schäff-Zerweck reported that he first heard a lecture by Hensel, who was then living in Stuttgart, at a meeting of freethinkers in Stuttgart around 1884.

Due to the close contact to the publishers of homeopathic literature in Philadelphia , Francis Edmund Boericke and Adolph Julius Tafel (Boericke & Tafel), Hensel's writings were also widespread in the homeopathic and life reform circles of North America.

Fonts

Hensel's writings appeared in several editions, some of which he changed himself during his lifetime, with different publishers, under sometimes different titles and as reprints up to the present day.

  • (Ed.): The retort. Newspaper for practical pharmacy . Conrad, Berlin 1867 (continued by the pharmacist Julius Krüger until 1869 under the names Pharmazeutische Presse and Berliner Apothekerzeitung )
  • About the causal mechanical development of organisms . Published by Julius Hensel, Stuttgart 1881 (under the pseudonym "Pilgermann").
  • New macrobiotics, or: The art of preventing and curing epidemics, along with a list of cures; for mediciners and authorities . Published by Julius Hensel, Stuttgart 1881
  • Life: its foundations and the means of its maintenance . Huseby & Co., Christiana (Oslo), 1885
  • Mineral fertilization, the natural way to solve the social question . Self-published, Hermsdorf o. J.
  • Macrobiotics, or: Our diseases and our remedies. Complement to: Life, its foundations and the means of its maintenance; for general practitioners and educated people . Boericke and Tafel, Philadelphia / Leipzig, 1892 (published again by Otto Borggold, Leipzig 1904)
  • Bread from stones. A New and Rational System of Land Fertilization and Physical Regeneration. Translated from the German . AJ Tafel, Philadelphia, 1894 (numerous translations into German since 1927 at the latest)
  • Simplified healing arts based on physiological chemistry: I. Rheumatism and tuberculosis. II. How are bacilli made? Otto Borggold, Leipzig 1899
  • The vital importance of the minerals in the blood and the entire substance of life . Otto Borggold, Leipzig 1902
  • The most important of the whole healing art or: What does a person need to live and stay healthy? Otto Borggold, Leipzig 1903

literature

  • Hermann Schelenz : History of Pharmacy . Berlin 1904, p. 722
  • Julius Hensel and his work . In: Homeopathic monthly sheets , No. 7, July 1927, p. 96
  • Elmar Ernst: The "industrial" secret drug and its advertising: pharmaceutical products in the second half of the 19th century in Germany (sources and studies on the history of pharmacy, vol. 12). Wuerzburg 1975

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Raymond Bernard (d. Walter Siegmeister, 1901-1965): Introduction . In: Bread from Stones, slightly modified reprint of the original edition from 1894 (around 1956), Soil and Health Library, p. 4f
  2. ↑ Elmar Ernst: The "industrial" secret agent and its advertising , p. 287
  3. ↑ Geist, Rudolf, Kaufmann . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1914, part 1, p. 826. “General depot of Hensel = Werke, oldest nutrient salt factory, Wormser Strasse”.
  4. ^ Heinrich Schäff: Memories of Albert Dulk . In: Der Schwabenspiegel , weekly of the Württemberger Zeitung, July 28, 1931, p. 233f
personal data
SURNAME Hensel, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician, chemist and pharmacist
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1833
PLACE OF BIRTH Küstrin
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1903
Place of death Hermsdorf under the Kynast