Which translation of the Organon should you read?
**Note that I assume you know the different authors of the translations by name. If you find you get lost in the names or editions, read my previous post on the various translations and authors first. **
If you are deciding which version of the Organon to get, then the answer to what is “best” largely depends on your goals, previous experience and personal preferences.
If an earlier edition is of interest to you, I would keep a few things in mind. Devrient’s translation of the fourth, and by extension the American editions based on his translation, I find to be really difficult to follow. Wesselhoeft (who translated the fifth edition) found quite a few errors in the American editions that weren’t in Devrient’s original, so read the American editions with a grain of salt. With Devrient and Wheeler’s translations (of the fourth and first respectively) are the only translations of their respective editions. This means for those of us who only speak English, it’s harder to know how accurate they are (meaning we can’t compare and contrast to another translation of the same edition).
But unless you are interested in comparing different editions, I don’t recommend any edition other than the sixth (why read things Hahnemann later felt were inaccurate or unimportant?). This is especially true if you haven’t read the Organon before. If it’s your first reading, read the sixth edition. So anything with Devrient, Wheeler, Wesselhoeft, Dudgeon, or Hering’s name on it would not be a sixth edition translation, so it’s not what I would recommend starting with.
Of the sixth edition translations, which do you read?
There are three translations of the sixth edition. One by Boericke and Dudgeon, one by Künzli, Naudé, and Pendleton and one by Decker and Brewster O’Reilly.
Boericke and Dudgeon’s translation is the most commonly available. You find it everywhere online (it’s out of copyright) and the hard copies are common and inexpensive. However, this version can be hard to follow, since it’s in Victorian English with the long and convoluted style of Hahnemann. It also has quite a few errors in the footnotes.
I find the clearest version is Künzli, Naudé, and Pendleton’s but it’s hard to find and does not include the introduction.
Decker and Brewster O’Reilly’s version will be the easiest hardcopy to find since it’s the most recently translated and includes a lot of great things for someone who hasn’t read the Organon before. For example, it has a summary of the aphorism next to the text of the aphorism and divides the work into chapters and subsections. They also include a glossary where they define archaic terms and go into the different nuances that may appear in German that are lost in a translation to English. Not all of it is useful, but there are some real gems in there. However, the language of this translation is very metaphysical. Hahnemann may have intended to have those overtones, and no other translation decided to include that, but I don’t know. It does rub me the wrong way sometimes, but that’s just my taste. All I really know is that it is unique in that regard.
Conclusion:
For most people just trying to understand Hahnemann’s Organon, reading the sixth edition first is best. There are three translations of the sixth, one inexpensive but not very readable version (Boericke), one clear but somewhat incomplete (no introduction or preface) and hard to find version (Künzli, Naudé, and Pendleton), and lastly a relatively clear, version that has clearly catered to students or “first time” readers who may not be familiar with the structure or are learning the concepts for the first time (Decker and Brewster O’Reilly). Depending on your preferences, I would go with one of those three.
Some additional sources (free Organons online, commentaries):
Information on the Organon in general, and the Dudgeon/Boericke version: https://organonofmedicine.com/ With each aphorism, they also include references to similar aphorisms!
Biographies of many (hard to find) homeopaths: https://www.sueyounghistories.com/
First edition by Wheeler: https://archive.org/details/homopathicmedic00devrgoog/page/n10/mode/2up
Fourth edition by Devrient: https://archive.org/details/homoeopathicmedi00hahn
Fourth American edition: https://archive.org/details/101509600.nlm.nih.gov
Fifth edition, Dudgeon: (1846) https://archive.org/details/organonmedicine01hahngoog/page/n20/mode/2up
Fifth edition Dudgeon, (1895) https://archive.org/details/64310280R.nlm.nih.gov
Fifth edition, Wesselhoeft: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hc2avn&view=1up&seq=7
Sixth edition, Dudgeon/Boericke: https://archive.org/details/b3135452x_0002/page/32/mode/2up
About the Decker/O’Reilly version: https://homeopathic.com/product/organon-of-the-medical-art-brewster-oreillydecker-translation-paperback-2/
Details about translation issues in all three sixth edition translations: https://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/commentaries-on-some-mistakes-in-the-german-english-translations-of-three-organons/