Mélanie Hahnemann

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Marie Mélanie d'Hervilly Gohier Hahnemann (* February 2, 1800 , † May 1878 in Paris ) was a painter and homeopath . She was the world's first licensed homeopath.

Life

Early years

Marie Mélanie d'Hervilly was born as the daughter of Comte Joseph d'Hervilly and Marie-Josèphe Gertrude Heilrath into an old but impoverished French aristocratic family. She enjoyed the privileges of the republican aristocracy and received private lessons, including from the scholar François Andrieux , who dedicated a poem to her. Victim of domestic violence on the part of her mother, she lived from the age of fifteen with her foster father Guillaume Guillon-Lethière , from whom she learned to paint. She earned her living selling painted portraits and miniatures and also received prizes and awards for her work. In addition to painting, the eccentric was enthusiastic young woman for horse riding, pistol shooting and political discussions.

She took on the name Gohier in 1830 when the former President of the Board of Directors Louis-Jérôme Gohier adopted her in his will and left her his fortune. Gohier's own daughter had been married for twenty years and had no children. Mélanie d'Hervilly-Gohier had the adoptive father buried with her family in the Montmartre cemetery. When her foster father Guillon-Lethière died in a cholera epidemic in Paris in 1832 without any surviving descendants, she buried him in the grave next to Goutier. In the same year, triggered by the epidemic, the 32-year-old became interested in homeopathy after the first British homeopath Frederic Hervey Foster Quin had performed some successful treatments. Her own health was also bad.

In the service of homeopathy

On October 7, 1834, she visited the homeopath Samuel Hahnemann in his home in Köthen in what was then the German Duchy of Anhalt-Köthen . Her appearance there in men's clothing caused a sensation, as did her stormy love affair with the almost 80-year-old Hahnemann, who had been widowed for two years. He married Mélanie on January 18, 1835, secretly and without church blessing. In June of the same year Hahnemann moved with his wife, now Mélanie Hahnemann, to Paris to practice there from August. Mélanie had the connections necessary to get her husband approved and quickly make him a sought-after and popular healer. The house in the Rue Madame was soon too small for the rush of those seeking help, which is why the couple moved to the Rue de Milan, which later became known as the Hahnemann Palace. Mélanie cared for her elderly husband and took on most of the cases herself, as well as house calls. The most prominent client was Niccolò Paganini , who broke off the therapy after a failed attempt to get closer to Mélanie Hahnemann.

As a staunch champion of Hahnemann's teachings, she obtained her diploma as homeopath in 1840 from John Helfrich, the founder of the first homeopathy school in the USA , but it was not delivered to her until after a long delay. After Hahnemann's death in 1843, she refused to release his body for burial for nine days; he was finally buried next to Goutier and Lethière. She continued his practice, but was tried and convicted in 1846 for practicing without a medical license. Even without such approval, she continued to treat her secretly without being prosecuted. The sixth edition of her husband's work, Organon , which she inherited , was not published until 1921, long after Mélanie's death, almost seventy years after the death of Samuel Hahnemann, due to technical and personal arguments with other Hahnemann supporters.

Her adopted daughter Sophie married in 1857 through Mélanies Karl von Bönninghausen, the son of the botanist and homeopath Clemens von Bönnighausen , a good friend of the couple.

In 1869 Mélanie Hahnemann hardly practiced any more. She slowly became impoverished and the effects of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 forced her to sell most of her property and the house. When she received medical approval in 1872, now far less popular than before, she was able to advertise her services openly.

She died in 1878 and was buried next to the three men who had shaped her life. Twenty years after her death, Samuel Hahnemann was reburied in the Père Lachaise cemetery in 1898 ; his wife lies next to him in an unmarked grave.

criticism

A frequent accusation that Mélanie Hahnemann was made of was that of a profitable or attention-seeking social climber who always seduced much older men. The inconspicuous to secret burials of Gohier, Lethière and finally Hahnemann also contributed to this. Their training was also improper. Her talent as a painter and as a homeopath is also questioned.

Objections of her supporters, however, are that she did not touch or turned down the inherited assets. In the homeopathic community, neither her merits nor her last will and that of her husband were considered, for example with regard to the funeral.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rima Handley: A Homeopathic Love Story. The life of Samuel and Mélanie Hahnemann . 6th, unchanged edition. CH Beck , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-45991-9 , pp. 27 ( excerpt from Google Books [accessed March 9, 2015]).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Hahnemann's biography on the WholeHealthNow website .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Biography of the Hahnemann Institute (English).
  4. ↑ a b c d e Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 205.
  5. ^ The first general practitioner license was granted in France in 1862.
personal data
SURNAME Hahnemann, Mélanie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES D'Hervilly, Marie-Mélanie; D'Hervilly-Gohier, Mélanie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter and homeopathic doctor
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1800
DATE OF DEATH May 1878
Place of death Paris