Fondation Pierre Schmidt
| Biography of Pierre Schmidt |
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22.07.1894 - 15.10.1987 Without the activity of living human beings who are capable of their embodiment, doctrines are only memories in the cemetery of dead ideas. The transmission of the doctrine of homeopathy through 200 years of history was only possible thanks to the sensibility, the intelligence and activity of great pioneers who passed their knowledge on. Hahnemann, Héring, Lippe, Kent and others established a living chain of transmission. After the death of Kent and a visible decline marked by a multiplication of parasitic doctrines, it was Pierre Schmidt who restored the doctrine of Hahnemann in its initial definition. After a journey to the USA to the followers of J.T. Kent, where Pierre Schmidt collected the doctrines, he returned to Switzerland. He taught a lot of students who were attracted by his growing reputation. Pierre Schmidt was a living application of a strange rule. He said: "Celui qui n'est que n'est même pas" With this he wanted to say that a homeopath should also be a physician. This means, that harmony within a human being can only be achieved if an equilibrium can be developed between its capacities of feeling, thinking and action. Pierre Schmidt was a physician and insisted on the necessity of medical knowledge, including not only classical medicine and the homeopathy but also elements of acupuncture, manual medicine, knowledge about semiology, proceeding from the morphopsychology to the iridology, in passing over the graphology, the chirology and the numerology. He also had a wide linguistic knowledge which enabled him to take the part of a translator, at a time when a method for a simultaneous translation did not yet exist. This ability also facilitated his teaching abroad and helped, when Pierre Schmidt was asked to organize seminars. Pierre Schmidt was very appreciative of art, literature, music, theatre, painting, and traditional tapestry-work. His working rooms were a real museum. But Pierre Schmidt did not neglect physical exercise either. In the winter, he skied, in the summer he went on mountain tours, with Fritz, his mountain guide. Nothing in human nature surprised him. In 1921, soon after his marriage, he founded a laboratory with the help of his wife. There, he prepared homeopathic medicaments following the traditional technique proceeding from the origins that he had brought home from his journeys to the USA. In 1935, he contributed to the foundation of the "Liga Homoeopathica Internationalis". The Liga has organized a congress every year, since that date. Furthermore, Pierre Schmidt never stopped to teach privately many students from all over the world who came to see him for a traineeship or those he met on his journeys. Because of his travelling his was nicknamed „the Globetrotter of the homeopathy“. The Foundation of the „Groupement hahnemannien de Lyon“, 1946 - 1978, was a culminating point of his teaching. The work of this group was collected and diffused in a monthly publication, the „Cahiers du Groupement hahnemannien de Lyon“, supplied by the classical practice, this journal is still published. The result of Pierre Schmidt‘s abundant literary activity is a great number of publications in French, English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. The French speaking homeopathic world is obliged to him for the translation of the 6th edition of the Organon, of Hahnemann‘s „Maladies Chroniques“, of J.T. Kent‘s „Lectures“ and of J.C. Burnett‘s „Cinquante raisons pour être homoeopathe“. In 1978, Pierre Schmidt stopped all his medical activities and lived with very good friends in Nancy. There, he died on the 15th of October 1987, aged 94 years. He left behind a great number of followers in Europe, Latin America and the subcontinent of India. They continue to pass on his work. Dr. Jacques Baur |