Carl Gottlob Helbig 1791 - 1869

Carl Gottlob Helbig 1791? - 1869 was a German orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy, to become a member of Samuel Hahnemann’s Provers Union and to elected President of the World Homeopathic Convention in Dresden in 1838.

Carl Gottlob Helbig also published the Homeopathic Journal Heraklites, alongside _Schwartz._

Carl Gottlob Helbig was the homeopathic practitioner of Robert Alexander Schumann, and a colleague of Karl Friedrich Gottfried Trinks, and he rejected isopathy, and did the first proving of Nux Moschata.

Carl Gottlob Helbig married Johanne Dorothea Franke, and they had a daughter Marie Magdalena Helbig born in 1811.

A Carl Gottlob Helbig either travelled to or immigrated to America before 1848…

According to the Zeitung list of 1832 he was then located in Dresden. Frederick Hervey Foster Quin also mentions the name.

The British Journal for April, 1870, says: Dr. Helbig is well known as the prover of Nux moschata and the author of several chemical works of Homeopathy, which have been noticed in these columns.

He was a man of great learning and was famous for the power with which he wielded his pen in the defense of Homeopathy in its early days.

He died at an advanced age in Dresden, on the 13th of last November (1869). We observe that the death of this distinguished Homeopathist has prompted a meeting in Philadelphia, under the auspices of Constantine Hering, to evoke a number of resolutions expressive of the esteem felt by Homeopathists of all countries for Dr. Helbig and of the loss Homeopathy has sustained by his death.

Pierre Augustus Rapou says that the homeopathic doctors, Schwartz and Helbig, are well known by a publication of a journal of medicine very original, called Heraklites.

Dr. Helbig is a very eccentric man; he is possessed of a natural instinct for difficult researches, neglecting the commonplace he seeks out that which is odd. He holds in consideration occult influences, magnetic and super natural. He is a man of another epoch, a savant of Albert le Grand. Helbig was one who assisted in exposing that great fraud Fickel; it was easy to him on account of his great knowledge of the materia medica of the ancients.

The Heraklides was commenced in 1833. Six volumes were published.

Helbig in the Heraklides repudiated Isopathy, saying that the only means of cure is the homeopathic, and that this pretended Isopathy is no more nor less than a one sided employment of similarly acting remedies.

Constantine Hering during a trip to Germany from 1845 to 1846, says: “I made the acquaintance of Dr. Helbig in Dresden, the prover of the Nux Moschata, and had many interesting and instructive conversations with him.

“His heart opened towards me when he found that I esteemed him so much more highly than any other of the Homeopathists of Dresden, and he referred in one of his conversations to the observations of Dr. Esquirol, of Paris, “In our insane asylums the dyers in blue are melancholic, etc.”

(Brit. Jour. Hom. vol. 28, p. 414. Pierre Augustus Rapou, vol. 2, p. 91, 92, 96, 151. Robert Ellis Dudgeon’s Lectures. Hahn. Monthly, vol. 6, p. 432.)

Carl Gottlob Helbig’s Obituary is in the Homeopathic Medical Directory of Great Britain and Ireland in 1871.

Carl Gottlob Helbig wrote About disease causes and cures according to their pure effects, Issue 1: The Muskatennuss, Leipzig, 1833, The Power of Similarity, and he submitted cases and articles to various homeopathic journals.

Of interest:

C E Helbig, son of Carl Gottlob Helbig, was a homeopath who knew Constantine Hering in 1873.