There was once a poor man crippled and sick, an artist, whom several of us thought should have an opportunity. I gave him some medicine, and told him if he was better when that was used he need not return. We united, several of us, and paid out much money to keep this man at Paris for several years. Long afterward he returned with a gift that he had made, chiseled from marble, a beautiful piece of work. I said to him that his work differed from mine, it was very beautiful but returned no response, while the poor crippled dishevelled man whom I was able to restore, returned in gratitude and warmth of vigorous life. His cold marble, crude and rough in the beginning, was only a cold, unresponsive object after all his work was expended upon it.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.