Joseph Reubel 1779 - 1852

Joseph Reubel 1779 - 1852 held the Chair of Homeopathy, and he was the Professor of Physiology and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Munich.

The Homeopathic Hospital in Munich was founded by Prince Carl Ottingen Wallerstein, and his physician was Joseph Reubel:

Probably the only one homeopathic hospital that survived World War I is the homeopathic cholera hospital in Munich. It opened in 1836. It emerged from the Society of Homeopathic Physicians, the administrative responsibility was taken over by Prince Carl of Oettingen and Wallenstein.

The physicians Joseph Reubel and Franz Seraph Widnmann did correspond with Samuel Hahnemann. Johann Joseph Roth even visited Samuel Hahnemann, in 1831 in Kothen, in 1836 and 1842 in Paris.

From 1837 on, the hospital exclusively had to be financed by private funds. After the epidemic, cholera had changed to a cholera sporadica, the hospital had to be closed for lack of the necessary funds.

In 1883, the Homeopathic Hospital in Munich re-opened its gates as an institution that started on a firm financial base. During the first 14 months, 31 patients were taken in, 19 of them were discharged from hospital being cured, and 5 died. Between 1883 and 1903, the number of patients varied between 30 and 44 per year.

In 1886, an outpatient’s department for penniless, poor persons was furnished. The number of dispensed medicines rose continuously up to 2,000 in the year 1901. The hospital was also a charitable institution, in which also old and infirm, mostly poor people, who where not constantly sick, were nursed throughout the year. This was criticized, because as a result, sufficient beds were missing for curable patients.

The number of in hospital patients raised further up to 76 in the year

1908. In 1913, 114 patients were accepted in the new building, 84 of whom were discharged from hospital being cured, 4 died, 12 remained in the clinic.

Unfortunately again, clinical reports are missing by which one could understand something about the homeopathic treatment. It is known that isopathic trials were done with the nosode Tuberculinum (administered in the 10th, 30th and 100th potency – in few and very rare doses). Several times it was emphasized that the scientific rigour of homeopathy is based on the study of the specificity of the remedy, recognized through its symptoms on healthy people (provings).

Joseph Reubel, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Munich and Professor of Physiology, is the firmest and most honorable representative of our school in that city.

Without him that method would for a long time have been completely arrested in its progress by the tyrannical measures taken for that purpose. It was through him these measures were revoked after a long fight of six years with the authorities, from 1837 to 1843 and he permitted me to examine the voluminous correspondence with the ministers I saw there a number of articles upon our school and the rights of free dispensing.

Reubel has practiced Homeopathy since 1822, but out of Munich, where it had only been known since 1832, the time in which our school gained in that city a certain standing. He was one of the most zealous physicians of the temporary hospital that Minister Prince Carl of Oettingen and Wallenstein had allowed us and he guarded with great attention the greater part of the clinical observations obtained there.

He is an exact Hahnemannian, but nevertheless attached only a secondary importance to the doctrine of psora and condemned the extension which the Master had wished to give it.

Joseph Reubell wrote Vier Vorlesungen uber die Cholera in Europa, and he contributed Cholera cases to the homeopathic community.

Of interest:

Hofrath Reubel also worked at the Homeopathic Hospital in Munich (or is this indeed Joseph Reubel?)