And all this measureless strength indicated by such unrivalled labors, was dedicated to the grandest objects, and justified by the highest results. Its products, crystallized in print, admirable and wonderful as they are, are but a small part of these results. The walls of Hering’s study, from floor to ceiling, are filled with manuscripts, in his own handwriting, all perfectly arranged and, methodized, to carry on the complete and incomparable works which he began and designed. Thus the matchless Worker, standing in his study, build up around him that pearly palace of his thought, which shall never know decay.
Alas Our Ulysses has departed on his travels, and there is none left at Ithica strong enough to bend his bow Atlas has gone to the Hesperides, and there is none to bear up the skies. And this incomparable laborer is dead
Above all, Constantine Hering was a man. All the constituents of mental character was his. Strength, courage, force and constancy distinguished him above other men. In ability to grasp, and firmness to hold, all that he recognized as truth, he had no peer. In adventurous daring, supported and justified by the tremendous momentum of his mind, he was simply sublime. His principles were pure, unselfish and high, and his loyalty to conviction unwavering. A better or truer man never lived. And his strong base of noblest manhood was overlaid with the fine gold of all gentle and attractive qualities. He was susceptible, appreciative, affectionate, constant, tender and forbearing. His heart was open as his hand, and the clasp of the one was warm with the pulse of the other. His tastes were cultivated and refined to that degree, that his house was the house of Art and Culture, and the refuge of struggling genius. His friends were statesmen, artists, scientists of worldwide reputation and renown: and of these, once gained, he never lost one. All who loved him, loved him to the end, either of their own lives or his. He was gentle as a child, pure as a snowflake, and warm as a sunbeam. In a word, the grand old name of Gentleman was his, by right of eminence in the essential qualities which constitute that character. In the words of one of our sweetest modern poets:
To him were all men heroes, every race noble, All women virgins, and each place a temple. He knew nothing that was base.
And this peerless Gentleman is dead
Dead Aye, even as the mollusk, the builder of the seashell dies, leaving his soul crystallized in forms of imperishable beauty which still ring with the sound of life’s eternal sea.
Hering is not dead. He does not sleep. His waking spirit walks abroad, through all the realms of thought. For such as he was there is no death. He lives, must ever live, in Memory, in Blessing and in Hope. In the hearts of many, rich and poor, high and low, his deeds have built a shrine whereon Gratitude will lay her morning and her evening sacrifices, until the hearts which cherished him as a Physician have ceased to beat; and even in dying, they will bequeathe his memory as a rich legacy to their children. The disciples and lovers of the cause he espoused and defended will never cease to hear the all-eloquent Champion of homoeopathy. The Student of Medicine, in the remotest future, will bless and revere the name of Hering, as the great Bringer of Order out of chaos of Materia Medica. The immediate and remote beneficiaries of his life-work will join hearts and hands in gratitude for his benefactions and in emulation of his industry. Ennobled by his name and fame, ever and forever, his children and his children’s children, will rise up and call him BLESSED.
After the eulogy the following ode was sung;
How sleep the brave who sink to rest, By all their country’s wishes blest When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallowed mold, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than fancy’s feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung. There honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay, And freedom shall await repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there
A benediction was asked by the Rev. John Snyder and the meeting adjourned.
MEETING IN KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
A meeting was held in Kansas City, Missouri, from which a preamble and resolutions were presented and approved.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEETING
Prof. E. C. Franklin of Ann Arbor spoke as follows:
The early history of Dr. Hering finds him a bitter opponent of homoeopathy. Born with the beginning of the century, in Oschatz, Saxony, at an early period he began his student-life under the immediate charge of his father. Here we observe him as a diligent and faithful pupil; developing those sterling qualities of head and heart that made him so attractive to his teachers while pursuing his studies in the High School (Gymnasium) of Zittau, then under the rectorship of his father. His remarkable powers of observation and analysis, his centering application, marked him out as no ordinary individual. In his twentieth year he matriculated as a student of medicine at the University of Leipzig, and during his pupilage he was singled out by his preceptor, on account of his superior literary attainments, to prepare a monograph in opposition to that medical heresy that was at this time agitating and unhinging the medical mind of Germany and other parts of the Continent. Elated with the prospect of a scientific tilt with the sage of Coethen, he began a review of Hahnemann’s writing, hoping to obtain an easy victory in his medical contest; but his reading only impressed him the stronger with the doctrines of Hahnemann, and scientific as he was, he became so thoroughly convicted with the depth of reason, and glow of genius, of the great medical reformer, that his criticisms were turned into laudation of the teachings of the author, and he became a convert to their strongly impressed truths.
About this time, and while pursuing his anatomical demonstrations, he inflicted upon his hand a poison wound from the keen edge of the dissector’s knife, which subsequently gave him no little solicitude and anxiety. He sought medical counsel of his old friends, and in spite of their best directed efforts he grew daily worse, and the gloomy alternative was given him of amputation of the hand. Chagrined and discomfitted, he accepted the proffered aid of a friend, a discipline of Hahnemann, and had the proud satisfaction of seeing his hand daily grow better, and finally saved from the dreaded prognosis pronounced by his attending physicians. With this his conversion to homoeopathy was secured, and he left Leipzig strong in the faith of Similia and entered the University of Wuerzburg. After attending lectures here, he graduated, in 1826, and returned to Saxony to practice his profession on his native soil.
He accepted the position of teacher of natural sciences and house-physician in a prominent school under the charge of Director Blochmann.
Wearied with continued application along the old grove of medical thought, disgusted with the endless jargon of medical theories and changing dogmas, and soured with the intolerant bigotry of that old school that is broken down in council and in fight, in hospital and in camp, yet brokenly lives, his active and restless spirit, imprisoned no longer by the bonds of state medicine, sought new and unpent fields for it is scientific longings. He saw in the profession of medicine a system of castes of corporations, not of individual, but of collective castes. He saw that a man can be anything he can be, but no man be anything out of the caste. He longed to be free, and like the imprisoned bird sought freedom in the boundless continent of beautiful fruits and flowers. An opportunity was soon presented, and he eagerly accepted the position that was the fulfilment of his daydream of usefulness, and which gave us the bright realization of his long-cherished hopes and made him a hero in the new world of progressive knowledge.
A distant relative had just returned from South America, whose vivid descriptions of the beauty and splendor of the natural curiosities of that far-off tropical region, where nature wears her sweetest smile and sings her loveliest notes, inspired his young heart to woo fickle fortune in the distant lands of the occident.
By the aid of influential friends he procured an appointment from the King of Saxony to accompany the accomplished naturalist (botanist) Weigel, and in 1827, with rosy hopes and elated spirit, he set sail for his far-off western home and arrived in Dutch Guiana soon after. Hopeful and buoyant, with a soul full of ardor for his cherished work, he entered upon his new field of labor and made many friends and converts to the faith that animated all of his labors. Still keeping up his medical studies, pari passu with his zoological enquiries, he attracted considerable attention, both to himself, and to the system of medicine by which he was continually bequeathing rich legacies to suffering humanity. While upon the very tip-toe of encouragement and merited commendation from those who were the almost daily recipients of his kindly care and thoughtful consideration, and while pursuing with diligence and earnestness his chosen field of study, a message was handed him from the Fatherland reprimanding him for daring to extend and popularize the hated science of homoeopathy, afar off though it be, in lands beyond the sea. His noble spirit, no longer fettered by the chains of that medical despotism that had bound him to the care of a hated propagandism during the earlier period of his student life, was stung to the quick, and chagrined at the unlooked for result to his chosen mission, he resigned his office and devoted himself to the practice of medicine in the city of Paramaribo.
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,