Joseph Attomyr 1807-1856

Joseph Attomyr 1807-1856 was a Croatian orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become a member of the German Central Association of Homeopathic Physicians.

Attomyr was a student of Matthias Marenzeller, Josef Muller and Samuel Hahnemann, and an influential homeopath and the author of many books and essays on homeopathy.

Attomyr was a colleague of Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Fleischman, Moritz Wilhelm Mueller,

Joseph Attomyr was the son of a wheelwright from Slavonia. He was brought up by a near relative in Esseg. He began his medical education in the Garrison Hospital in Vienna at a time when the arguments against homeopathy centered around the homeopath Matthias Marenzeller. Attomyr was not an advocate of homeopathy at this time.

However, when he was called up to military service to the Curassier Regiment, he met Josef Muller and was most impressed by his homeopathic cures, such that he asked Josef Muller to train him in homeopathy.

Leaving military service Attomyr joined the Joseph’s Academy to finish his medical training, but he contracted tuberculosis and was thought to die. However, Attomyr cured himself with sepia, astonishing his allopathic colleagues, but he was nonetheless expelled from Joseph’s Academy for practicing homeopathy!

Attomyr went to Munich to complete his MD in 1831. From there, Attomyr went directly to study under Samuel Hahnemann.

On his return to Austria, he became physician to Count Czaky of Zips and began to write his Letters on Homeopathy. He spent some time as physician to Charles II Duke of Parma (then Duke of Lucca), before returning to work for Count Czaky, and then travelling to Pesth to work with Moritz Wilhelm Mueller in 1844.

Attomyr wrote many books and essays on homeopathy and he worked in private practice as a homeopath until his death in 1856, leaving many unfinished manuscripts on homeopathy.

… by the 1820s homeopathy had spread in Slovenia to a degree that it became the subject of newspaper debates. A further valuable source is the book _Briefe über Homöopathie _(1833–1834), written by the physician Joseph Attomyr.

The data about Slovenia in this booklet is based on information provided to the author by a correspondent from Ljubljana. Some information about homeopathy in the Dolenjska countryside can be found in the notes of the writer Janez Trdina dating between the 1870–1879 period. There is no important literature on homeopathy in Slovenia, but the phenomenon is mentioned in several surveys of the history of official and folk medicine and the information is related to some of its practitioners and users

The Attomyr Archive: Joseph Attomyr studied in Vienna under Matthias Marenzeller and in Budapest under Josef Muller; after having healed himself from tuberculosis, he was expelled from the Vienna Josephinum.

After having lived in Munich, Köthen, and Leipzig, he settled in Budapest as a well known homeopath from 1839 until 1845.  As might be expected, Attomyrs correspondence with his 21 colleagues Bernstein, Claudius, Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Fleischman, Gulyas, Gutmann, Ivanovich, Jaekel, Kazinski, Keiller, Melicher, Josef Muller, Necher, Pezval, Sator, Schellhammer, Scholz, Schwarz, Stantzky, Karoly Fulop Starovessky, Vattenchich und Wirkner as well as with the politician Gustav von Struve, the treasurer Count Karoly Csaky de Korosszeg et Adorjan, Count Imre Emmerich Festetics and his patient Julie Szumrak concerns mainly issues of homeopathy and the treatment of patients as well as the dissemination of the homeopathic doctrine and the activity of the German Central Association of Homeopathic Physicians founded in 1829.

Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Fleischman for example, then one of Vienna’s leading homeopaths, answers Attomyr’s question regarding the cure of Typhus abdominalis (letter dated 11 March 1840); the Bohemian physician Georg von Necker (who introduced homeopathy to Naples and cured the Duke of Bourbon) thanks Attomyr for a diploma (letter dated 18 Feb. 1836).

Gordianus Jaekel, surgeon at the Erlau convent of the Brothers Hospitallers, describes several case histories and suggests a chair of homeopathy at Pest University. His letter (dated 31 March 1833) also provides a detailed account of an interesting case of Mesmerism.

Attomyr’s correspondence with his teacher Josef Muller in Budapest encompasses 13 autograph letters.

Among the numerous addenda, a letter by Carl Haubold to Samuel Hahnemann and a manuscript copy of his answer deserve special mention. Joseph Attomyr: Briefe über Homöopathie.