Henry Detweiller and Homeopathy
Henry Detweiller (Detweiler) (Detwiller) (Detwiler) 1795 - is credited with issuing the first homeopathic prescription in Pennsylvania in 1828, the second state in America in which homeopathy became established.
After attending the village school until entering the thirteenth year of his age, he was placed in a French Institute at St. Immier for two years. At the expiration of that term he became the private pupil of Laurentius Senor, M. D., a graduate of Wurzburg, under whose systematic instruction he during three years prepared for matriculation in the Medical Department of the University at Freyburg, Grand Duchy of Baden.
In the spring of 1814, he was admitted to that university, and remained there five consecutive semesters. He had then just entered his twenty first year. Being a great admirer of natural sciences, he longed for a new field in which to cultivate his scientific tastes to their fullest extent.
He therefore resolved to visit the United States and devote four years to the collection of zoölogical, mineralogical and botanical specimens, etc. Accordingly he embarked in the spring of 1817, in company with several hundred emigrants, at Basel on the Rhine, and landed at Muyden, near Amsterdam.
During the passage he acted as physician to the company. On arrival at Muyden, he was requested to present himself before a Medical Board at Amsterdam ; he did so and was appointed physician on the ship “John,” of Baltimore, an old three-master that made then its last trip with over four hundred souls on board.
The captain taking a very southerly course, going south of Bermuda in the middle of July, the oppressive heat produced dysentery, cholera morbus and prostrating diarrhœas. The medicine chest was inadequately supplied, and had it not been for Dr. Detwiller’s and General Dominique Vandamme’s private stores the mortality would have been fearful.
The vessel arrived in the port of Philadelphia in the latter part of July. Greater part of the passengers being redemptioners, they had to remain on board until disposed of ; many of them were on the sick list, and they, as well as the sick on board another vessel in port, were entrusted to Dr. Detwiller’s care by the port physician ; the same trust was reposed in him at the quarantine station by the official physician.
While thus detained in Philadelphia he became professionally acquainted with Dr. Menges, an eminent French doctor, by whom he was frequently called in consultation in the family of General Dominique Vandamme and other French refugees of rank in Napoleon’s time.
At the suggestion and persuasion of Joseph Bonaparte, General Dominique Vandamme and Dr. Menges, he abandoned the idea of going into the Western wilderness -the Indian country- and made preparations to establish himself in a locality where the German language was mostly spoken.
Being well provided with letters of introduction, he proceeded first to Allentown, Pa., and on September 3d, 1817, entered the office of Dr. Charles H. Martin as assistant. Here he practiced seven months with signal success.
Henry Detweiler arrived in Philadelphia from Basel in 1817. He had studied medicine at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and emigrated just prior to receiving his diploma.
After serving as an assistant in the office of Dr. Charles H. Martin in Allentown, he opened his own office in 1818 in Hellertown, twelve miles south of Bath. He did not, in fact, hold an M.D. but degrees were not required at that time for medical practice.
During the fall and winter of 1817-’18, there appeared in many parts of Lehigh and the adjoining counties a disease attacking whole families with more or less severity, and attended in convalescence with frequent relapses, the patients dragging along a pitiable existence for months, and frequently succumbing to either phthisis or dropsy.
This disease was diagnosed by the physicians with whom he came in contact as “bilious colic,” as one of the most prominent symptoms was abdominal or intestinal pain, with very obstinate costiveness and vomiting.
The prevailing practice was opium and calomel in very large closes, powerful doses of all kinds of laxatives, tobacco smoke being forced into the rectum through a peculiar apparatus, while salivation was produced to a fearful extent.
It was the discovery of the real cause of this so-called -bilious colic,” or “verstopfung,” as it was called by the German laymen, that brought to the favorable notice of the public the “young German doctor,” under which appellation the subject of this sketch was generally known.
It proved to be lead poisoning in the form of malate of lead, produced from the glazing with litharge of earthen pots in which apple butter, often rather sour, had been kept. This discovery, and his successful antidotal treatment, created for him an enviable professional reputation, and many were the invitations he received from different parties to establish himself permanently in their localities.
He finally selected Hellertown, Pa., and in April, 1818, he opened an office there. In the following December he married Miss Elizabeth Appel, a native of the vicinity of the village. By this marriage he had three sons and four daughters.
Sometime in the mid-1820’s, William Wesselhoeft and Detweiler became close personal friends and began a series of-informal medical meetings. One of their meeting places was the Moravian Pharmacy at 420 Main Street in Bethlehem. The pharmacist-physician in Bethlehem at that time was Dr. John Eberhard Freitag (1764 - 1846), also a German immigrant with a background similar to those of William Wesselhoeft and Detweiler.
In November, 1835, his wife, after a protracted illness, died of phthisis pulmonalis.
In 1835, together with Drs. Henry Detwiler, William Wesselhoeft, George Henry Bute and John Romig, Constantine Hering founded in Allentown the North American Academy of the Homoeopathic Healing Art.
Constantine Hering became the first President and principal instructor. This was the first Homoeopathic School in the world. Constantine Hering and his colleagues also established the Hahnemannian Society, the first formal homeopathic society in America, and the second publication on homeopathy in America.
In 1836, Dr. Detwiller visited Europe in company with his eldest son, whom he placed in an institution of learning, to remain for four years under the guidance and guardianship of a particular friend and professional gentleman.
During his sojourn in Europe he made it one of his special objects to have interviews with the illustrious Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, at Paris, Professors Shoclein, Lorenz Oken and Schintz, in Zurich, on scientific subjects, and in the interest of the Allentown Academy of the homœopathic healing art also, of the Coryphæus of homœopathy in the United States, Dr. Constantine Hering.
He also visited his Alma Mater, presented his certificates of examination (absolutorium), executed in the fall of 1816, when he had not attained his majority or the age required by the statutes for the holding of a degree. So after an absence of twenty years he applied to the medical faculty for a re-examination, and, if found worthy, for the grant of a diploma.
The faculty met, and after subjecting him to a rigorous examination in all the different branches, surgical operations on the cadaver, and so forth, he was rewarded with that to which he would have been entitled twenty years before had he been of age, namely, a diploma of Doctor Medicine, Chirurgiæ, et Artis Obstetriciæ.
Returning to the United States, he resumed his practice in Hellertown, and pursued it until 1852, when he removed to Easton, Pa. He introduced homœopathy in this place, and had to contend against the usual unfair and unprofessional opposition of some otherwise respectable allopaths.
During his residence of thirty-four years in Hellertown, Pa., notwithstanding his very extensive and laborious practice, he always managed to husband time to follow his favorite study of natural science.
In the course of time he got together the flora sauconensis, the name by which he calls his herbarium, the specimens being collected principally in upper and lower Saucon.
Many botanical excursions were made in company with his friends Dr. Lewis David De Schweinitz and Dr. (?) Jacob Hübner. The ornithological specimens -the mammals reptiliæ, cheloniæ, etc., etc.- collected and by him prepared, represent, with but few exceptions, the whole fauna of Pennsylvania.
The greater part of his collections have been donated to various public institutions and museums in Europe, especially to the museum at the University of Basel, he being a corresponding member of the Natural Historical Society there.
On July 23rd, 1828, Dr. Detwiller dispensed the first homœopathic remedy selected in accordance with the law of similia similibus curantur, and from that onward till now in his seventy-eighth year he has continued an active and successful practitioner of homœopathy.
To him also belongs the honor of being the first dispenser and introducer of homœopathic remedies in the State of Pennsylvania, as is set forth in a paper, entitled, “The Rise and Progress of Homœopathy in Pennsylvania,” published in the Transactions of the Homœopathic Medical Society of the State, at the eighth session, as reported by Dr. Pemberton Dudley.
In 1836, he was elected a member of the medical faculty of the Academy of the Homœopathic Healing Art, at Allentown. At the organization of the American Institute of Homœopathy in New York city, in 1844, he became a member, and is one of the few surviving original members of that flourishing institute.
On April 5th, 1850, he was elected a fellow and corresponding member of the Homœopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania.
On May 27, 1835 the cornerstone was laid for the main building of the Allentown Academy in a festive ceremony featuring an inaugural address by Dr. Constantine Hering himself. Two three-story wings of the main building were erected south of Hamilton Street and east of Fourth Street in Allentown; a second building somewhat remote from these was planned to house the chemical laboratory and anatomical and dissecting rooms.
The Pennsylvania State Legislature granted the institution a charter of incorporation on June 16, 1836. Instruction commenced immediately thereafter. The faculty consisted of Drs. Constantine Hering, William Wesselhoeft, Henry Detweiler, John Eberhard Freitag, John Romig and Joseph Hyppolyte Pulte….
The Academy itself did not last long beyond its journal. The medical school had deposited its funds in an Allentown bank which folded in the financial panic of the late 1830’s.
Formal instruction terminated in 1839 and although numerous attempts were made to re-fund the institution, a terminal board meeting was convened on June 14, 1843.
The termination at this point was merely a formality, as the school had ceased operations four years earlier. The four key physicians and their mentor had long since moved on: Constantine Hering to private practice in Philadelphia, William Wesselhoeft to Boston, and John Eberhard Freitag, Henry Detweiler and John Romig to private practices in Bethlehem, Hellertown and Allentown, respectively.
Dr. Detwiller has two sons, four grandsons, and one son-in-law, all graduates of medicine, and three of them homœopaths.
Through his long and honorable career, Dr. Detwiller has displayed unusual ability and resource as a physician, has been rewarded with distinguished success, and has gained the confidence, respect, and esteem of all classes.
Of interest:
Isaac C Detweiller 1830 - 1900 was the oldest homeopathic physician in Pennsylvania in 1900 vowed to give every dollar he earned from his practice to charity, having already made a fortune in building. Isaac had already donated a large sum of money to troops during the Spanish American War. Isaac had two brothers who were also physicians who sadly drowned, and two other brothers and two sisters.
Wellington C. Detweiler was a teacher of medicine and homeopathy in the 1880s:
of Findlay, O., was born on the 23d day of August, 1832, in Mifflin county, Pa., of German descent, his ancestors coming hither from Germany before the revolutionary war, and settling in Pennsylvania. He was early apprenticed to a plasterer, but moving to Findlay, O., in 1851, he entered the Findlay Academy, and remained under instruction about three years. He then settled on a farm in Illinois, but finding the business unremunerative, returned to Findlay after an absence of two years.
In 1854, he was married, in the latter place, to Miss Harriet Fritch, and in 1859, commenced the study of medicine under the instruction of Dr. C. Oesterlen, and during the winter of 1860-’61, attended the Cleveland Homœopathic Hospital College.
On the breaking out of the war of the rebellion, he enlisted in the 21st Regiment of Ohio Infantry Volunteers, and served three years, chiefly as Hospital Steward, in which position he gained a knowledge of surgery, for which he is now so celebrated.
Returning home in 1864, he engaged in general practice for two years, and graduated with great honor in 1867.
He is an occasional contributor to the homœopathic periodicals, and by his great success has obtained a practice second to none in northern Ohio, while by his integrity and uprightness he has gained the esteem of the community in which he lives.
William K Detweiller mentioned in the Directory of homeopathic physicians in 1925.
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