OF
DR. WILLIAM WESSELHOFT.


BY ELIZABETH P. PEABODY.
TO WHICH IS ADDED,
HIS LAST ADDRESS TO THE HOM(EOPATHIC
ASSOCIATION.
BOSTON:
NATHANIEL C. PEABODY,
201, BEDFORD STREET.
1859.



DR. WM. WESSELHOFT.


5


and some severity of character: but his wife
was a woman of refined temperament and
intellect, of tender sensibility and disposition;
loving the beauty of nature; forever garnering
" the harvest of a quiet eye;" and William,
her darling, inherited her traits of mind and
body.
Born in 1794, when all Germany was just
made newly conscious of the genius of her
sons, by Gothe, Schiller, and Jean Paul, it
was William Wesselhift's happy fortune to
open his eyes upon life in Saxe-Weimar's richest era of science and literature. The great
Gothe was a familiar guest at the house of his
uncle Frommann, which was the rendezvous
of the literati of Jena at that time; and not
unfrequently at his own father's house. When
William was ten years old, the model student
of the eighteenth century took a kindly interest
in his commencing education, and gave pencils
and paper and friendly counsels to him and his
brother Robert (who was a year younger), in
order to induce them to draw: for Gothe considered drawing an essential of early education;
and it is well known he excelled in this accomplishment himself, and pursued it to his latest
days.



DR. WM. WESSELHoFT.


7


clergyman Hecker, near Leipsic, to teach his
children French and other things; and there,
as much of a playfellow as a governess, laid
the foundation of a lasting friendship with
Ferdinanda Hecker, who was at the time but
fourteen years of age, and ever afterwards
visited the Wesselhifts at Jena, and at length
married Robert.
The correspondence with his sister, which
Dr. William    Wesselhift diligently kept up,
during all his American life, until her death
in 1844, formed a little treasury of her letters,
which, with those of his beloved mother, he
carefully preserved to re-peruse in his old age;
a period to which he looked forward in the
spirit of Robert Browning, in the hope and
intention to" Retire apart
With the hoarded memories of the heart;
And gather all, to the very least,
Of the fragments of life's earlier feast,
Let fall through eagerness to find
The crowning dainties left behind;
Ponder on the entire past,
Laid together thus at last,
When the twilight helps to fuse
The first fresh with the faded hues;
And the outline of the whole,
As round eve's shades their framework roll,
Grandly fronts for once the soul."



DR. WM. WESSELHiOFT.


15


prising that the impulse developed itself within him to go and assist the struggling Greeks;
whose movement for freedom    came like the
sound of a trumpet, from the old glorious
times, upon all the cultivated young men in
Europe, and even reached those of America.
It was characteristic of the generosity and
courage of William Wesselhoft, that, with his
all-sided medical education perfected,- and
which included even a knowledge of the manufacture of surgical instruments,- he should
become surgeon to the German Philhellenen,
just as the news came of the disastrous battle
of Peta, in which all the officers of the corps
of French and Germans had perished, with
two-thirds of the members. He started well
equipped with the furniture of a surgeon.
The quantities of lint scraped and bandages
oversewed by the enthusiastic sympathy of his
sister Wilhelmina, his friend Ferdinanda, and
others who were in the secret, were so ample
that they have served him for his surgery all
his life, and are not yet exhausted. For he
was disappointed of this expedition. When he
arrived at Marseilles, he found an injunction
laid upon the vessel. No more volunteers
could go to Greece.



22


MEMORIAL OF


attention of the public: it had a scientific
origin.
The same love of truth and independence
of tradition which had inspired his studies
with Schubert and Oken, together with his
personal modesty on the one hand and his
faith in the perfection of nature on the other,
compelled him to investigation. And, when
he had become convinced by personal observation that Hahnemann's preparations were
effective, no timid conservatism, no considerations of material prudence, restrained him
from dropping the methods he had already
suspected of creating as much disease as they
cured, and of adopting one against which
there was, at the time, the universal prejudice
which always attends new discoveries: for in
science, as in spiritual life, the opus operatum
is ever liable to become the stumbling-block,
rather than the stepping-stone, of progress.
Unquestionably, the pupil of Oken, who
had accepted as a principle, that the human
was the metropolis of all organizations, was
not wholly unprepared for a system which implies that there are occult relations between
the imponderable forces that difference the
various substances that compose the mineral,



DR. WM. WESSELHiFT.


25


medicine that cured; though it is true, that it
is rather those who are about the patients, than
the patients themselves, to have this doubt.
But there are multitudes of cases where neither patient nor observer can doubt; and these
soon multiplied in Dr. Wesselhoft's practice.
Among his first successes was his treatment of
croup with spongia and hepar. He communicated these cases to the best-instructed German physicians in his neighborhood, - Dr.
Freytag, a Moravian, of Bethlehem; and Dr.
Detwiller, of Hellertown,- and engaged them
and others in the experimental investigation.
So great was the respect that Dr. Wessolhoft's
personal characteristics had inspired, that,
although some individuals were angry that he
would not administer to them at their desire
allopathic medicines, most of those who had
employed him before continued to do so, and
took the small doses: for, when he became
convinced that the homoeopathic method was
true, he felt it to be the best evidence that the
allopathic method was false; and his conscience
would not permit him to tamper with this
fearful and wonderful human frame.      He
used to say, that if, when it was well constituted, it was hard to drive from it the life,



26


MEMORIAL OF


even with the whole circle of poisons, it was
always easy enough to fill it with chronic
anguish, to be transmitted for generations.
There is scarcely a drug in the allopathic
practice of which Hahnemann does not note
the effects as diseases, and give the antidotes.
Dr. Wesselhoft tested these notations in his
own practice as fast as possible, and in no instance came to a conclusion in opposition to
Hahnemann's. However he might speculate,
as Dr. Joslin has done (whose " Five Lectures " was a favorite book of his, which he
liked to put into the hands of his patients, to
show them that homoeopathy might have a
rational theory also), his own method was
the strictly Baconian one of experiment, -
observation of the phenomena, and inductions
therefrom. The art of medicine was with him
a more serious consideration than the theory;
and his delicate and tender humanity secured
that there never should be a careless or reckless experiment.
With views so serious and generous, it was
not possible for Dr; Wesselhoft to content himself with personal success.  The increasing
interest in homceopathy soon suggested a
Prover's Union, of which he early became a



DR. WM. WESSELHOFT.


31


Dr. William Wesselhift approved of watercure as an agent of hygiene; but he succeeded
in convincing his brother, that it did not take
the place entirely of medication by homoeopathic remedies; and Robert was initiated by
his brother into the materia medica, during his
year's residence in Allentown.
But Dr. William Wesselhoft gave his hearty
sympathy to the project of establishing the
water-cure. Water was an admirable regimen
to purify the system which had been abused
by drugs, and restore its normal susceptibility
to the delicate medication of Hahnemann.
When Dr. Robert Wesselhoft had been able,
during a residence of a year or two in Cambridge, to obtain some co-operation in his plan,
Dr. William Wesselhoft, who removed to Boston meanwhile, and immediately entered upon
a large and lucrative practice, proved his most
efficient aid in founding the Brattleborough
Water Cure.
There is no doubt that Dr. Wesselhift had
the most agreeable expectations, with respect
to society, in removing from the interior of
Pennsylvania to Boston; as he had not been
insensible to the immense change from SaxeWeimar to Northampton County, where, though



DR. WM. WESSELHOFT.


33


Jean Paul, - d a s E i n i g e, - that had played,.ike the educating sunshine, over the morning
of his own life; and which, instead of terrifying the weak and vain and susceptible, with
coxcombical sneer, from that which might perhaps be known, burst through the barriers of
the dead past, and found new worlds of life
to sport in, with the creative frolicsomeness of
inventive power, irrepressible in its glorious
courage, as the spirit of Hafiz, when he proposed to 1" break up the tiresome old sky."
Dr. Wesselhoft subsequently passed his own
sons and nephews through the Medical School
of Boston, because he was altogether too liberal to undervalue, in their own departments of
science, those who took no pains to inquire
into his possible knowledge, in that one " whose
shores had not been approached within sight"
by any of them, according to the confession
of their own brightest ornament.
Besides, he wished those, whose medical education he directed, to know all that could be
said for the errors which they were to oppose
in their practice; having a serious contempt
for the wisdom that preserved its own selfrespect by ignoring what, if admitted, might
possibly show its treasures to be folly.
3



48


LAST ADDRESS OF


tencies, now so much used, they go to the
bottom, "man and mouse."
But, after all, by dynamization we have
gained for science but one more imponderable.
It astonishes us only by its newness, and by
its immense relations with human welfare and
medical science. Magnetism, electricity, galvanism, mesmerism, and these dynamized
solids, are equally wonderful, - one not more
than another. All great agencies of nature
are of like fineness and penetrability.
Similia similibus does not refer only to the
similarity of the medicinal symptoms with
those of the disease: it also has a bearing on
the similarity of all the other relations of contagious miasmata with the curative powers.
1. The sickening potencies of contagious miasmata are imponderables as well as the curative. 2. The finer and more dynamical their
qualities are, so much stronger and quicker
their effects. Syphilis and psora require contact for their transmittance; but they will not
prove mortal for many years: while typhus or
varioloids are contagious at a great distance,
and endanger life in a few days. 3. As contagious or miasmatic matter adheres with incredible tenacity to paper, wool, or other indif



DR. WM. WESSELHOFT.


53


seen and experienced there will ever be remembered. A better future beamed from every
eye, germinated in every body. A shadow of
this life has maintained itself among the Germans in America; and it is the only grand
bond of union still existing in this race, so
prone to separation and disunion.
Gentlemen, laxatives and tea are two great
representatives of what has depressed the
generations: gymnastics and homoeopathy will
elevate them again. If I had only the choice
between the introduction of homoeopathy on
the one hand, and that of gymnastics and
physical education on the other, I would resort
to the latter, notwithstanding that Hahnemann
is my guide through the labyrinth of dyscrasic
diseases; for, without physical education, the
physician's activity would for ever remain confined to the limits of the cobbler's bench.
Through physical education and gymnastics,
we must form a soil in the human body on
which a dyscrasy cannot continue to flourish;
and that which is not allowed to advance will
go backwards. Such a thing as standing still
between progression and retrogression does not
exist in nature.   Through endeavors prolonged through several generations for the