Willi Sewerin 1914 – 2000
October 06, 2009
Willi Sewerin 1914 – 2000 was a
German who studied veterinary medicine at Hannover University, and then
converted to homeopathy to become a famous manufactirer of Q Potencies
at Arcana Arzneimit
telherstellung.
Sewerin was a student of Adolf Voegeli,
… a Who’s Who of the Q-potency pioneers… Mathias Dorcsi, Hartmut Oemisch (1901–1992), Jost Kunzli von Fimmelsberg, Pierre Schmidt, Rudolf Flury and Adolf Voegeli, he lists Ernst H Schmeer, one of Adolf Voegeli’s students, Willi Sewerin (1914–2000) – the founder of Arcana Arzneimit telherstellung, Jacques Baur and Hanns C Laudenberg (*1915), the two latter being students of Pierre Schmidt…
As he was not satisfied with the conventional approach to medicine he turned to homeopathy. He attended courses by Adolf Voegeli and started preparing LM potencies for use in his veterinary surgery. He achieved very positive results with these high potencies and therefore kept on extending his medicine chest.
When, in 1954, during a workshop with Adolf Voegeli in Überlingen on Lake Constance, many of his medical colleagues complained about the limited availability of LM potencies, Dr Sewerin felt called upon to fill this gap.
On 1st October 1957 he founded the company Arcana Arzneimit telherstellung. In 1962,he passed his examination as alternative practitioner,but he did not receive permission to practise this profession because of his veterinary background. It took a three year legal dispute before the German Federal Administrative Court decided that the two professions could be practised side by side.
Until 1997, Dr Sewerin worked as a vet and nonmedical practitioner. After his death in 2000, his oldest daughter, Katrin Zink née Sewerin, who had studied pharmacy at Münster University, took over the familiy business as director of production and managing director.
She is supported by head of quality control, Dr Michael Grün. Right from the beginning, Arcana Arzneimit telherstellung exclusively produced “50 millesimal potencies”.
Soon after Adolf Voegeli’s first seminars in Freiburg and Überlingen, the first seminar participants were supplied with Arcana Arzneimit telherstellung LM Potencies. At the afore mentioned conference in Bad Wiessee in 1965, Dr Sewerin gave a lecture on the manufacture of the LM potencies according to the sixth edition of the Organon.
The first product list from 1957 contains the following significant comment: “All medicines listed here are produced up to the 30 LM potency according to Samuel Hahnemann, _Organon_, 6th edition, using manual succussion only.”
… Apart from some pioneers of ‘classical’ homeopathy (Rudolf Flury, Adolf Voegeli, Pierre Schmidt, Jost Kunzli von Fimmelsberg and others) a number of companies that specialised in the manufacture of the 50 millesimal potencies, such as Arcana Arzneimit telherstellung Dr Sewerin GmbH & Co in Gütersloh, contributed to their rediscovery and dissemination…
In the mid-1960s, the Q potencies had clearly ceased to be only a topic for a small circle of homoeopaths keen on experimenting. On April 10, 1965 – Samuel Hahnemann’s 210th birthday – the Bavarian branch of the Zentralverein homöopathischer Ärzte in Germany held a meeting in which focused mainly on Q potencies.
Among the speakers were – apart from the aforementioned protagonists Mathias Dorcsi, Laudenberg, Jost Kunzli von Fimmelsberg and Eichelberger – Georg von Keller (1919–2003) from Tübingen and Martin Stubler (1915–1989), second chairman of the German central association of homoeopathic physicians from 1960 to 1975.
Also invited were pharmacists who had already specialised in the manufacture of Q potencies at this early stage: Dr Sewerin, founder of Arcana Arzneimit telherstellung Wolfgang Spaich, who, in 1956 had founded Staufen-Pharma in Göppingen together with Harald Pfander MD, board member of the German federal association of the pharmaceutical industry and chairman of the department for phytotherapy, as well as Dr Friedrich Zinsser, who had opened a pharmacy at the ‘Neckar Gate’ in Tübingen in 1958 and later on worked closely with Dr Georg Keller on the manufacture of Q-potencies.