HOMEOPATHY AND INDIA

This therapeutic system came to be practiced in India when two German Geologists were in India from about 1810-1825 for geological investigations and remained for some time in Bengal where they distributed homoeopathic medicine to the people. They were called "cholera doctors" in Bengal.

Dr. John Martin Honigberger (1795-1865), a Hungarian doctor, born at Kronstadt (Braşov), Romania, brought homeopathy and the name of Hahnemann to India in 1839. Dr. Honigberger, then a versatile allopathic surgeon, arrived at Lahore in 1829-30. The then ruler of Punjab, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was impressed by him when he treated his favorite horse of its bad leg ulcers.

In 1835 Honigberger traveled to Paris and met Dr. Hahnemann. He bought a large quantity of homoeopathic medicines from Hahnemann's Pharmacist, Lehmann of Kothen. In his second asignment in India, in early 1839, on arrival, he cured Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who had three European doctors but never took their prescribed medicine, of paralysis of vocal cords and oedema, and was handsomely rewarded. Shortly before his death on 27 June 1839, the Maharaja was once again quickly relieved of his complaints and in return Honigberger received valuable rewards. Honigberger could only watch helplessly as the native hakims subsequently insisted on administering a paste made from precious stones, which did no good at all, rather than follow the already beneficial homeopathic treatment. READ HONIGBERGERS BOOK

The lay-homoeopath Babu Rajendra Lall Dutt (1818-1889), a wealthy businessman, wrote letters ( around 1843?) seeking clarification from Hahnemann through a common homeopath doctor acquaintance. Pundit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820-1891), one of the greatest intellectuals and activists of the nineteenth century, suffered from intense migraine headaches and was treated in Kolkata around 1850 by homeopathic medicines prescribed by Babu Rajendra Lall Dutt. He was so impressed by this that he prevailed upon his youngest brother Ishan Chandra Banerji to take up homeopathy. Dr. Pareshnath Banerji (1891 – 1971), a nephew of Pundit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar ( and father of the Kolkata homeopaths, Dr Parimal Banerji and Dr Prasanta Banerji) was reverently called "Rishi" for his devotion in treating the poor with homeopathy.

Surgeon Samuel Brooking, a retired Medical Officer had the courage and conviction to establish a Homoeopathic Hospital at Tanjore, in South India, in 1847. Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar M.D. D.L., C.I. E.(1833-1904), was one of the first three Indians to become a qualified physician of mainstream Western medicine in India. He was converted to homeopathy in 1861 by Babu Rajendra Lall Dutt, whom he had often ridiculed and challenged. He delivered a speech ‘On the supposed uncertainty in medical science and on the relationship between disease and the Remedial Agents’, before the Bengal branch of the British Medical Association (of which he was the founding Secretary) on its fourth annual meeting in February 1867.

Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar was expelled from the British Medical Association in 1867. The year 1867 is also memorable for the establishment of Banaras Homoeopathic Hospital with Shri Loke Nath Moitra as Physician In-charge. In August 1869 a homoeopathic charitable dispensary was started at Allahabad with Shri Priya Nath Bose as the Physician In-charge. Dr. Pratap Chandra Majumdar ( died 1922), M.D. another Homoeopath of Calcutta started his practise in 1864 and laid the foundation of Calcutta Homoeopathic Medical College in 1881.

HONIGBERGER, DOCTOR JOHN MARTIN (1795-1865), physician to the court of Lahore from 1829 to 1849 and known to his Sikh contemporaries as Martin Sāhib, was born at Kronstadt (Braşov), Transylvania, Romania in 1795. He combined with his medical knowledge an ardent spirit of enquiry and adventure. He had a great fascination for the East. He left his home in 1815, and wandering through Europe, Russia, Turkey, Syria and Jerusalem, reached Cairo, where he joined the Turkish military medical service. In 1822, he heard about an outbreak of plague in Syria and resigned his post to study the disease in which he became a specialist. He set up practice in Damascus, but moved on again after a few years and arrived at Baghdad where he was employed by the Pasha as his personal physician, with the additional charge of a local hospital. Having heard, from a travelling merchant, of Mahārājā Ranjīt Singh's generosity and the welcome the Europeans met with at his court, Honigberger decided to proceed to the Sikh capital. He set, out in the winter of 1829 and reached Lahore in four months' time.

Ranjīt Singh was out on a military expedition when Honigberger arrived at Lahore and did not return until the rainy season. During the interval, Honigberger established his reputation as a physician. The first patient he attended, and successfully treated, was Achilles, adopted son of General Allard, who had long been suffering from a fistula on the spine. He also journeyed to Kashmīr, where he cured Rājā Suchet Singh of a chronic disease.

In 1833, Honigberger suddenly became homesick and made up his mind to go back to Transylvania. Ranjīt Singh had developed such a liking for him that he was loath to let him go. He raised his salary and even offered him governorship of a province. "But such was my longing to depart, " writes Honigberger in his book, Thirty-five Years in the East, "that not even the Rājā's Koh-i-Noor, valued at Rs 5,00,000 would have tempted me to remain."

Travelling overland, he passed through Afghanistan, Central Asia and Russia, and finally reached his home in 1834, after an absence abroad of almost twenty years. But he stayed there only for six months before embarking on his travels again. After visiting several European countries, he arrived at Constantinople. During this journey, he had met in Paris Dr Hahnemann, the father of homoeopathy. He became deeply interested in the new system of medicine, and practised it at Constantinople from 1836 to 1838.

In 1838, on hearing, from Ventura, that Ranjīt Singh was critically ill and desired him to return to Lahore, Honigberger abandoned his practice, went to meet Ventura at Alexandria, and returned with him to Lahore via Bombay. Here his old offices were restored to him. His immediate concern was the fast failing health of the Mahārājā, who was almost paralyzed and had lost his speech. A mixture prepared by Honigberger enabled the ailing monarch to sit up and speak, and he continued to attend on him. A newsletter, Punjab Akhbār, dated 6 June 1939, states: "He (Ranjīt Singh) complained to the physicians that he felt very weak and uncomfortable in consequence of his using the talc powder but that he liked the drug brought to him by Ruttun Singh Gudvaee last night from Doctor Martin.... Doctor Martin was ordered to give some effectual medicine like the drug he had given..." But no medicine could save the Mahārājā who died on 27 June 1839.

Honigberger had since married a Kashmīrī woman. He continued to stay in Lahore and witnessed many of the tragic scenes such as the death of Kanvar Nau Nihāl Singh and the assassination of Mahārājā Sher Singh. He was dismissed by Pandit Jallā but was re-employed after the latter's death. He continued in service even after the lapse of Sikh sovereignty and was in charge of gaol and the asylum for lunatics which he had himself founded. But he soon fell out with his British superior, Dr McGregor, and resigned. The British government, however, granted him a pension of Rs 500 per month, payable in Europe, and he retired to Transylvania with his two children, who during his service in Lahore were sent to school at Mussoorie. He died in 1865.

Honigberger's memoirs, published in London in 1852 under the title Thirty-five Years in the East, contain in addition to a record of his life, adventures and experiences, much valuable information about historical events as well as about life, manners and customs in the Punjab of his days. His primary interest, however, was his profession. He gives in his memoirs a comprehensive medical vocabulary, profusely illustrated by drawings of medical plants, and details of diseases and their remedies in homoeopathic, allopathic, Āyurvedic and Ūnānī systems of medicine. Homoeopathy claimed his first love.