Constantine Hearing is dead, and all the orphaned Children of Affliction weep, and all the generous and noble of earth have sympathy in their sorrow and are partakers of their grief.
In the effulgence of his larger and brighter fame, we are some times inclined to forget that Hering was preeminently the Physician. Let us tenderly and gratefully, in sympathy with the wide circle of his bereaved patients, remember this fact tonight. Nature and education combined to tender him the great Healer. His temper was generous, ardent, tender, affectionate and high. The pathematic was amongst forces of his grand nature; and it was always a wisely regulated and perfectly governed force. High over all that wealth of sympathy, delicate, and susceptible as ideal women’s, sat the intelligent and regal Will, rendering it subservient to the great end of his presence in the sick-room. And what a presence there His stately form-his flowing locks and beard-the pure white light of cultured intellect shining on his lofty forehead and flashing in his earnest eye, mellowed and softened by the roseate hue of deep and hearty kindness-his mere appearance was the Harbinger of Hope to the Couch of Despair. And then his manner Quiet, not soft, gentle, not weak; firm, not hard’ confident, not rash; serious, not solemn; the gravity of simple earnestness, combined intelligence; it was the finished perfection of the bearing of the Typical Physician, and had, itself, a healing power.
His Method of Diagnosis was the analysis of exclusion. He ascertained, with the utmost care, and minuted with the greatest exactness every characteristic symptom. This group of hostile appearances he attacked with all the energies of his powerful mind. One after another, he cast out and trampled under foot every false and specious probability, until he stood, at the last, face to face with his great enemy-the actual, the imminent and the dangerous Dynamic Force: and against this, when found, his Arsenal of Provings rendered him almost invincible. He was never hasty or empirical in practice. He cared nothing for the man-whether rich or poor, or high or low,-but everything for the patient. It was a hand-to-hand fight with Disease; in which, once engaged, the thought only of his Antagonist, and would neither surrender or be beaten. Of course, his success was great, if not unexampled. By his own person and individual prescriptions, he snatched from the hand of Disease and Death unnumbered and innumerable thousands; and indirectly, by the influence of his discoveries, suggestions and teachings, he was undoubtedly the most valuable factor of his age in the grand multiple of Health and Life. His patients venerated, trusted, loved, idolized, almost worshipped him. No other man or men could supply his place to them. He was their favorite and all- powerful Apostle of the Gospel of Health; and when they could not secure his visits they would fain, like them of old to Peter, have brought forth their sick into the stress, that at least his shadow, in passing, might all upon and bless them. And this great Physician is dead
Hearing was the unrivalled champion and advocate of the Eternal Law of Similia Similibus Curantur. Since, intelligent, high cultured, profound, original, bold and eloquent, he lifted his banner from the dust of popular contempt, and challenged, for its insignia, the admiration and gratitude of the nations. All his interests, all his prejudices, the bent of his education, the pride of championship, the heat of conflict, the hopes of his friends and admires-all forbade him to embrace the new and despised Heresy. Yet embrace it he would and did, with all the fervor of his hero heart, simply, because upon investigation, not impartial, but prejudiced, he found it true. The wave of conviction which rolled into his mind, from the vast Ocean of Truth, washed every stain of prejudice from its shores, and left them shining with the calm light of certainty.
And his was so emotional conversion, born of a moment’s frenzy and destined to perish with the passing furor. It was not because the New School saved that right arm which the Old had doomed to excision, that he devoted its energies, with such consistent and efficient fidelity, to the redemption of a pledge wrung from him in an hour of insupportable anguish. It was because, with all the exhaustive thoroughness of his grand and luminous intelligence, he had previously investigated tested and proved, until his whole nature was rife with conviction, that the healing touch of homoeopathy had power to kindle the long prepared train, and dedicate him, in an explosion of feeling to the perpetual championship of its incomparable merits. Thenceforth, all his previous attainments became but the stepping-stones by which he ascended to the serene heights of Culture, and stood on their loftiest professional pinnacle, alone.
Hahnemann became his friend, intimate, and teacher: and from this Sage the hungry Neophyte drew all the accumulated treasures of his lore. Thence, girt with the commission of Royalty, under the stellar light of the Magellan Clouds, he sought the secret of nature in her most affluent home, and, fast as they accumulated, turned these treasures to the light of public advocacy of the cause he had so earnestly espoused. Farseeing, patient and profound, as broadly and highly cultured, he rested not on any yielding soil, but digged, and digged, until he reached the rock of ultimate truth; so that he may be said to have stood, with his head among the stars, catching the earliest and latest gleam of heaven’s light, and with his feet planted upon the immovable foundations which support the world. With his gigantic reach and grasp of truth, he could not but be original. With the constituents of sincerity, earnestness, and self-sacrifice, he could not but he bold. With the freshness and enthusiasm of the youth, joined to the knowledge and culture of the philosopher, and the sage, he could not but be eloquent. All these he was. And this invincible Champion is dead
Hering was per eminence the inspired Teacher. Poeta nascitur non fit: had never truer application than to him. He was born for the vocation, and his high and incomparable gift of original genius he supplemented by the most careful training. Always be taught con amore. At home, on the street, in the sickroom, in his study, in the clinique, from the chair of the lecturer or the rostrum of the orator-wherever auditors could be found-he was their wise, patient, and delighted instructor. This was the purpose of all his learning. He gained but to impart. His whole capital of mental wealth was free to all comers. Of his illimitable gains he boarded nothing. The fountain of his instruction was perennial, and had its source in the everlasting springs of Genius, Labor and Love. And though he sought not this end, the paradox of Scripture was fulfilled to him: all of his gifts were gains. By the operation of a changeless law, what he gave to others was doubted to his own bosom. This was the secret of his unfailing readiness and fulness. Knowledge, he deemed a universal heritage, to which every willing and capable mind had an indefeatible right; and whereever he found such minds, it was more blessed for him to give than for them to receive. Yet these gifts, widely and lavishly as he flung them forth, were but the small change of his thought and his mind was rich in massive ore, in ingots and gems. And with all this priceless wealth he dowered Humanity with his pen.
He was the father and maker of our Medical Liter; for what he did not produce, he inspired. His own thought products, completed, begun and designed, are so many and so intrinsically great, that admiration loses is flippant eloquence, and sinks into wonder and awe before the processes of so vast a mind. No such writer on Popular Medicine has ever lived. His Domestic Physician still teaches the multitudes, in many languages and editions, the secret of health at home; and his Analytical Therapeutics, and Guiding Symptoms are of a quality which might satisfy the aspirations after fame of many first-class minds, and will require the labor of many such to complete them, with the materials already gathered and prepared by their great author. All these precious instructions to the world are couched in terms the most simple and direct, and distinguished by an entire absence of style. He wrote simplest and strongest vehicle. Of him it may be said, with truth and emphasis, that, not only to our own school, but to the whole world of Medical Thought and Culture, He has a Teacher sent from God. And this matchless Teacher is dead
Hering was an unexampled Laborer. In boyhood, his sport was toil. In maturity, his recreation was creation. In age, his repose was application. He took no rest, and needed none. Work was his pleasure and his passion. Each day of his life was too brief for the busy ends he assigned it; each hour of every day, though beginning with the third after midnight and ending only with the tenth after midday, too short for his toilful purpose. To the very last day, and almost the last hour of his life, his unresting exertions never ceased. And yet his energies never flagged. He did not toil on doggedly and dully, the reluctant slave of a cruel purpose; but with such warm, earnest and cheerful interest as made him dread the hour of necessary suspension of his task. The sustained fire of his energy was simply marvellous. There is nothing in the correlation and conservation of material forces which can at all account for it. It did not lie in the food he ate, or the sleep he took. Rather, it would seem to have been the result of such an uncommon affluence, in the original endowment of his vital forces, as the world has seldom, if ever seen. Instead of losing, as is the case with other men, this rare mind seemed rather to accumulate fire and force by its own progress. And it was no unregulated and disorderly energy, which thus found its necessary expression in ceaseless action. Every mental impulse had a method-every intellectual ebullition poured its forces into a prescribed channel-every molten thought settled into its previously prepared mould, and hardened into the shape which it was predestined to take and wear forever. It was labor with such method as economized and utilized every particle of mental energy; as if the worker had been the poorest of the poor, instead of the wealthiest of earth, in intellectual endowments. And the method was no clumsy, fanciful or grotesque contrivance of idle revery, prevented taste, or passionate prejudice, but the highest and most finished product of original genius, guided by intelligent and cultivated skill. It was such a method as may be seen a sample of in the Analytical Therapeutics; a method to fill the mind with wonder and joy, and to fall upon the world of Medical Thought and Culture like the benediction of the Most High.
In 1878 and 1879 he published 2 editions of his book, Sunstroke and Its Homeopathic Treatment.
Upon Hering's death in 1880 Knerr became responsible for the completion of the 10-volume Guiding Symptoms.
Dr. Knerr wrote 2-volume Repertory to the Guiding Symptoms,