Clemens Maria Franz, Baron von Bœnninghausen was one of the most noteworthy of the early practitioners of Homœopathy. Born in the Netherlands on March 12, 1785, on the ancestral estate of Heringhaven in Overijssel, his lineage was traced through Westphalian and Austrian ancestry, one ancestor having been appointed as Field Marshal by Ferdinand II of Austria in 1632. His early life was spent in the open, and he entered rather late upon his education, but after once starting, his progress was rapid. He graduated from the Dutch university at Gröningen with the degree of Doctor of Civil and Criminal Law on August 30, 1806, and thereafter for several years he filled increasingly influential and arduous positions at the court of Louis Napoleon, King of Holland, remaining in the Dutch Civil Service until the resignation of the king on July 1, 1810. He then returned to his home and devoted himself to the sudy of agriculture and botany. He married in 1812 and removed to his hereditary estat