In the early 19th-century Austrian Empire, few figures held as much power over the physical and institutional health of the state as Dr. Andreas Joseph von Stifft (1760–1836) – after all, he was the personal physician to Emperor Franz I! He had risen from fairly modest origins, studied and trained at the University of Vienna, gained attention with a reform plan for the Josephinum, was then appointed second Stadtphysikus, and subsequently Hofarzt and imperial Leibarzt. As long‑serving director of medical studies and high state official, he reorganised curricula, promoted new disciplines and institutions, and helped shape public health policy in the Austrian Empire. In a nutshell: he was one of the most influencial doctors of his time.
His place in the history of medicine is well-documented. But his role in the history of homeopathy is less well-known: Stifft was homeopathy’s most formidable antagonist, employing his influence to orchestrate a near-total ban of the practice. His power was rooted in his commitment to the influencial Vienna Medical School and in the rigorously state-controlled medical hierarchy of the Austrian Empire. He considered the medical profession to be an important pillar of the conservative Restoration era. To Stifft, Samuel Hahnemann’s “Law of Similars” was therefore not merely a medical deviation; it was a threat to the scientific and administrative order he had spent building all his life.
Stifft’s most direct blow against homeopathy was the Imperial Decree of 1819 prohibiting the use of homeopathy altogether. He had managed to convince the Emperor that homeopathy was a “danger to the public” because it bypassed the well-established pharmacy system. By encouraging physicians to prepare their own remedies, homeopathy threatened the economic stability of apothecaries, who were vital tax-paying entities and strictly monitored by the state.
Under Stifft’s guidance, the decree framed homeopathy as:
- Scientifically Unsound: Stifft dismissed the concept of potentization (extreme dilution) as mystical nonsense.
- A Threat to Public Safety: He feared that patients would forgo “proven” treatments like bloodletting or mercury-based purges in favour of “sugar pills.”
- Administrative Chaos: If every doctor became their own pharmacist, the state’s ability to regulate drug quality and safety would collapse.
Stifft’s influence was so absolute that even high-ranking aristocrats who supported homeopathy had to seek treatments in secrecy. Practicing homeopathy could lead to the loss of a medical license or even imprisonment. Ultimately, Stifft represented the medical establishment’s attempt to use state power to control heathcare. Yet homeopathy’s survival among the nobility and its perceived success during epidemics eventually led to the repeal of his ban in 1837, only months after Stifft had died.
The 1831 cholera epidemic pitted the aggressive, often debilitating methods of the medical establishment against the placebos of homeopathy. The outcome of this comparison was so statistically undeniable that it effectively broke the political stranglehold Stifft had maintained over Austrian medicine.
When cholera first reached Europe in 1831, the medical establishment was helpless. The “heroic” treatments of the time – championed by Stifft – involved:
- Excessive bloodletting (often until the patient fainted).
- Strong purgatives (like Calomel/Mercury) to “flush out” the disease.
- Blistering agents applied to the skin.
In cholera characterised by rapid dehydration and exhaustion, these treatments proved to be more lethal than the disease itself. Mortality rates in regular hospitals often soared between 40% and 60%. In contrast, Samuel Hahnemann recommended remedies like highly diluted Camphor, Cuprum, and Veratrum. They had no effect, of course, but no effect was miles better that killing patients with ‘heroic medicine’. While Stifft had argued that homeopathy was a threat to “public safety,” the public could see that people were surviving in homeopathic wards while dying in state-run ones.
By 1837, just one year after Stifft’s death, Emperor Ferdinand I (the successor to Franz I) officially repealed the ban of homeopathy. The “miracle” of 1831 had proven that the state could no longer justify the suppression of a method that seemed to “do no harm” during a time when official medicine was doing plenty.
I find the story fascinating not least for one reason: the success of homeopathy is mainly due to the failures of conventional medicine. This was true at the time of Stifft, and it is true today when far too many conventional doctors fail to realize how important time, compassion and empathy (which homeopaths often have in spades) are for curing patients.
13 Responses to Andreas Joseph von Stifft and the Ban of Homeopathy
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Fascinating, factual, fabulous.
Many thanks and best wishes.
Richard.
Hahnemann was close in one aspect of immunology: a tiny amount of disease causing substance does lead to protection……I wonder how the history of Cowpox/Smallpox innoculation interplayed with his ideas……??
this is an often-heard argument – but it is mistaken. Hahnemann’s remedies did not contain a tiny amount, they contained nothing at all of the mother tincture.
@Timothy Nelms
Also note that Hahnemann did not generally use actual pathogenic material (‘a tiny amount of disease’) as the basis for his ‘remedies’ – but rather substances that would cause in healthy people symptoms that were similar to particular disease symptoms.
Which is why to this very day, water-shaking clowns treat many diseases with infinitely diluted arsenic trioxide (‘arsenicum album’), as acute arsenic poisoning produces symptoms similar to those occurring with many diseases: abdominal cramps and pain, vomiting, diarrhea, chest pain, irregular heartbeat, headache, and a general feeling of weakness and being unwell.
Sloppy scholarship again, Rich…
Samuel Hahnemann did occasionally experiment with medicines prepared from pathological material (what later came to be called nosodes). However, he used them rarely, cautiously, and usually in the context of chronic diseases. Most of the later systematic development of nosodes came after his death (especially by later homeopaths like Constantine Hering and James Compton Burnett).
Below are the main examples associated with Hahnemann himself.
1. Psorinum
Source: Material from the vesicles or scabies lesions associated with “psora.”
Hahnemann believed that psora (chronic itch/scabies-like eruptions) was the fundamental miasm underlying many chronic diseases.
He occasionally used preparations derived from the disease material itself in potentized form.
The remedy later became known as Psorinum.
Although Hahnemann discussed psora extensively in The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homeopathic Cure, the later preparation and clinical expansion of Psorinum as a formal remedy was largely done by later practitioners.
2. Variolinum (early experiments)
Source: Smallpox material.
Hahnemann described the idea of preparing medicines from disease products in potentized form.
He explored the concept using smallpox material, anticipating later nosodes.
The remedy Variolinum was more fully developed after his time by later homeopaths.
This work occurred during the era when vaccination (following Edward Jenner) was being widely debated.
3. Other Pathological Preparations (conceptual groundwork)
Hahnemann proposed the principle that pathological substances could be potentized and used therapeutically when they corresponded to the symptom picture. Examples he mentioned conceptually included:
–material from itch eruptions
–venereal disease products
–other disease secretions
“A Threat to Public Safety: He feared that patients would forgo ‘proven’ treatments like bloodletting or mercury-based purges in favour of ‘sugar pills.’”
In other words, von Stifft was right for the wrong reasons!
So Ernst just wants to gain legitimacy from some of his old opponents by saying, “Look, this guy wanted to ban homeopathy; we should do the same.” What good did it do Ernst and his entourage of pseudo-skeptics if homeopathy is still available in pharmacies anyway? How many papers has he managed to get retracted from journals without justification, and how many are still being published? It’s easy to see that it’s the same four minions who always spout nonsense; the rest are intellectuals in psychology or the philosophy of science desperately trying to devise ridiculous experiments to claim that pro-homeopathy advocates are “pro-Trump, anti-vaxxers, deluded fools with low IQs!” Meanwhile, the poor pseudo-skeptic psychologists are still unable to explain how homeopathy works in plants and cells. In fact, Richard Rasker has yet to offer a single valid argument to refute the published research.
@sandbox2
What, you mean the absolute top-notch product of homeopathy, the absolute best that you water-shaking clowns have come up with in the past 230 years, the veritable pinnacle of dilution science, the almost magical nostrum: oscilloquackinum?
If, for the sake of the argument, we accept the claims you make, then the positive effect of this ‘remedy’ has been replicated in studies not once, not twice, but THREE times(*)! And what an effect it is! Apparently, it shortens the duration of symptoms of the common cold by no less than SIX HOURS!!!
Which, of course, given that a cold usually lasts about 5 days, is an insignificant improvement of just 5%. And once again note that this is THE ABSOLUTE BEST that water-shaking clowns can come up with.
Do you have any idea how stupid and pathetic this makes you look?
*: Two of which were done by the quack company that makes a couple of hundred million dollars per year selling oscilloquackinum. But IIRC, they declared no conflict of interest, so that’s probably OK. We can of course trust homeopaths and other quacks on their word!
I love it..thanx for verifying WHY some physicians and pharmacists (aka apothecaries) HATED homeopathy…and that was because the pharmacists/apothecaries could not make any big money dispensing these small doses! And because homeopaths commonly only prescribed ONE medicine at a time, there was so much more money that could be made by prescribing dangerous medicines that required the use of the dangerous medicines to treat their side effects.
As for Austria…here’s an except from my book, “The Homeopathic Revolution.” It provides a much wider context of history and shows how well homeopathy performed in the 19th century:
The history of homeopathy in Austria is of particular interest and significance because homeopathy and homeopaths experienced some of the strongest attacks in this country, though later, it also experienced its greatest successes and general acceptance.
One of the earliest experiences that Austrian royalty had with homeopathy is typical of the many controversies that occurred in this country. The head of Austria’s army against Napoleon was General and Prince Karl Phillip von Schwarzenberg (1771–1820). General von Schwarzenberg was successful against Napoleon in the famous 1813 battle at Leipzig, a German city where Hahnemann lived at the time. The general did not receive homeopathic treatment at this time nor after experiencing a stroke in 1817. However, when he had his second stroke in 1819, he sought homeopathic treatment from Dr. Hahnemann. After initial homeopathic treatment, Dr. Hahnemann visited the general and was shocked to find another doctor bloodletting him. Because of this problem and because the general chose not to stop his vigorous consumption of alcohol, Hahnemann withdrew from being his physician. Shortly afterward, the general died, and the conventional physicians and apothecaries blamed Hahnemann for the death.
The German literary great, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was extremely critical of conventional medicine of that day and of doctors’ efforts to restrict access to homeopathic treatment. On May 5, 1820, he wrote: “In this place a curious game is being played by refusing and damming up innovations of every kind. E.g., nobody is allowed to practice by Hahnemann’s method” (Haehl, 1922, I, 113).
Francis I (1792–1835), emperor of Austria, actually prohibited the practice of homeopathy from 1819 until 1835. In 1828, he ordered that an experiment be made with homeopathic treatment over a sixty-day period. In spite of the fact that only one of the forty-three patients treated in the hospital died and that all nine patients with serious inflammatory diseases were cured with homeopathic medicine, Professor Zang, one of the conventional doctors who oversaw the experiment, asserted, “It is wonderful what nature can accomplish” (Haehl, 1922, II, 493). Although the prohibition against homeopathy was not withdrawn until the new emperor took over the country several years later, Austria’s Archduke Johann appointed a homeopath as his personal physician shortly after this experiment.
After the death of Francis I in 1835, homeopathy experienced unprecedented growth. In fact, several of Austria’s royalty became practitioners of homeopathy. Patients came in crowds to Count Gustav Auersberg on account of his successes in homeopathic treatment. Princess Wilhelmina Auersberg, renowned for her benevolence, went from cottage to cottage in her estates in Bohemia, giving her needy tenants the benefits of homeopathic treatment. In Zleb, in Bohemia, she established a hospital with twelve beds for poor peasants, attended by her physician, Dr. Kohout. In 1846, Countess Harrach also founded a homeopathic hospital for the poor in Nechanitz, in which 404 patients were treated during the first three years (Mueller, 1876).
Count de Fickelmont, Austrian ambassador to His Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies (part of Italy), then at Vienna, wrote a letter very supportive of homeopathy to General Luigi Caraffa, who himself was a friend of homeopathy. The count wrote:
The system [homeopathy] has passed through the trial to which it was submitted with the most brilliant success. That explains why its opponents put every difficulty in the way of the publication of the report. I found since my last journey to Vienna that homeopathy had made immense progress. The consequence will be that no one can refuse to believe the evidence of facts. The patients cured are a speaking proof that must of necessity make converts. (Granier, 1859, 69)
The new medicine continued to spread throughout the empire. People of rank gave it their support, the rich assisted with their means, and many heads of scientific societies favored its dissemination.
In the 1840s, some observers noted that homeopathy was practiced more in Austria than in any other European country. There were hospitals and dispensaries everywhere, and homeopaths were nearly as numerous as conventional doctors (Hunt, 1863). The University of Vienna and the military academy had professors of homeopathy. Medical students could choose between the systems.
Homeopathy’s popularity in Austria grew even more as a result of the remarkable cure of Field Marshall Radetzky. Joseph
von Radetzky (1766–1858) was a nobleman and Austrian general, immortalized by Johann Strauss’s Radetzky March. The emperor appointed Radetzky his field marshall in charge of the Austrian army in 1836, when Radetszky was 70 years old. In 1841, he suffered from a tumor in the orbit of his right eye. Radetzky being a favorite of his, the emperor insisted that he be seen by two professors of ophthalmology, Francisco Flarer and Friedrich Jaeger ; both asserted that he was incurable.
Radetzky then sought the care of a homeopathic doctor, Dr. J. Christophe Hartung (1779–1853), a colleague and early student of Hahnemann. Within six weeks, Radetzky was completely cured (Clarke, 1905, 103–106).
As with many cures resulting from homeopathic treatment, conventional physicians and apothecaries questioned the
authenticity of the ailment and the cure. Fifteen years after Field Marshall Radetzky was cured, a conventional medical journal raised questions, but the field marshall responded forcefully, asserting real value to the homeopathic treatment he received.
I love it.. Thanx for verifying what an utterly insignificant clown you are.
Are you talking about yourself Lenny? Dana is right on all accounts.
Dana? Being right about something?
That’ll be the day.
Dana is spouting nonsense, and @Mutus is kissing his ass over it. Just as you’d expect. 😀