Two more medical journals of Samuel Hahnemann are digitally available

The medical practice of Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) is documented by more than 50 journals. It is a time-consuming and and resource-intensive task to make these important documents accessible. As early as the 1960s, senior physician Dr Heinz Henne (1923-1988), then head of the predecessor institution of the Institute for the History of Medicine (IGM), began to work with and transcribe the surviving medical journals. He wanted to use the sources to present the basics of homeopathy and thus objectify the discussion about the controversial healing method. The IGM, founded in 1980, continued these endeavours. However, given the length of individual journals, some of which are up to 500 pages long, and the difficulty of deciphering Hahnemann's handwriting, it was not easy to get researchers interested in the time-consuming and tedious transcriptions. We are pleased that the list of edited medical journals can be extended by two volumes. Journal D 2, originally edited by Dr Henne, is now available as a database edition. In addition, the French medical journal DF 12 can be presented for the first time. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our colleague Arno Michalowski for his years of meticulous work on this journal and the transcription of the text. This means that these volumes of this historically valuable and unique source are now also conveniently available to a wider circle of users. Arno Michalowski drew up standardised transcription guidelines for the medical journals in 1990 and coordinated the editing of various volumes in the following years. As a result, a number of journals could be presented as printed editions (D 2 to D 6, D 16, D 19, D 22, D 34, D 38 as well as DF 2 and DF 5). The journal DF 5 became the basis of a pilot project in the course of which its transcription was transferred to the markup format of the Text Encoding Initiative(https://www.hahnemann- edition.de/index.html). After completion of the project, various results were transferred to the provision of further medical journals in the form of a database edition (D 20 and D 21, DF 2). An overview can be found here.