But another great secret of Hering’s success lay in the masterly power of his inspiration. Himself endowed with inexhaustible inspiration he seldom failed to inspire all with whom he came in contact.
It was no more idle to think of touching fire without being burned, than of meeting Hering and not catching some of the enthusiasm that warmed his breast. May believe me, it was inspiration which made his face radiant with light, and caused his halting tongue to adorn the English language, which he never quite mastered, with new beauty.
It was not my privilege to know him intimately, but I have known many of his scholars: I have met many men who sat at his feet, and God bless his memory. I do not know that he ever sent out a halting or a doubling principle. However some of them who may have become broken pitches in a subsequent years, came from Hering’s hands without flaw or blemish.
Constantine Hering was a true homoeopath. With his whole heart and mind he believed the truth as expressed in Similia. The power to demonstrate its universal application to all forms of disease, was greatly limited in his earlier days. The needed agencies were few. There were no schools to teach Hahnemann’s doctrines. There were no books to promulgate this new-born truth. There were no journals in which to show the results of experience, and there was as good a chance of finding paintings by the old masters on this new continent as of finding drugs, of any sort, for homoeopathic prescribing. In some obscure corner of Philadelphia, in some hidden recess in New York, there might, perchance, be found a few remedies prepared after the formula laid down by Hahnemann; and these, when found, were mostly in the 30th centesimal attenuation.
But in those days they knew no better than to give such things to people who were sick. They had not heard of the Milwaukee Academy or of the revelations of the Boston microscope. And so the 30th were given, and as the sick recovered, the name and fame of Homoeopathy was spread abroad.
From Allentown, Hering went to Philadelphia, and on a broader stage, surrounded and aided by ardent and able disciples, he found his cause growing with great rapidity.
It is not too much to say that the sceptre of command which he first took, on coming to America, did not fall from his hands until he was stricken by death. He fell at his post of duty, and upon the day of his death he was no less ardent and devoted to the truth of Homoeopathy than when he first espoused the cause.
We have seen some attempted changes within our school within the past few years. Our fabric has been rocked by the baleful influence of the spirit of reaction toward the chaos of eclecticism and the discarded errors of Allopathy; and while our future, in this respect may be clouded in doubt, we have the proud satisfaction of knowing that upon the fair escutcheon of Hering’s name, this cloud can never rest, for never did he bow the knee to Baal.
The heroic old man is dead. Here ends one of the grandest epochs of medical history. Henceforth, on her fair pages shall stand fourscore years marking the life of Constantine Hering. What a magnificent spectacle is the production and completion of such a man What a crown of glory it places upon the brow of humanity What a priceless gift is such a life to the human race What a harvest of intellectual wealth is now gathered in by the death of this great man Like some choice ceramic he passed unharmed through the fires and became more and more beautiful as the flames of adversity burned deeply into his moral and mental nature the immortal colors of a deathless life.
Constantine Hering was a born leader of men because of his high intellectual endowments and his whole-souled devotion to truth. Tradition tells us, that, in the far East and in ages long since gone by, an elder Constantine, while at the head of his imperial army, saw in the clouds a vision of the cross and over it these words: In hoc signo vinces. And by that sign he went forth to conquer, and laid the foundations of a great and lasting empire.
So, in after times, this young Constantine, saw in his imagination, the fair temple of medical science rising till its golden spires were kissed by the clouds of heaven, and over its fair portals he saw deeply graven by the Divine hand these trenchant words: Similia similibus curantur; and he exclaimed-By that sign we shall conquer, and like a true prophet he prophesied and then fulfilled his own prophesies. It is a supreme happiness to us who live today, that we have seen such a spotless life completed. He lived and worshipped at the shrine of nature; and when his days were numbered, he fell into the arms of the All- Natura which had cradled him in his infancy, and in that great bosom, the love and power of which no man knows, Constantine Hering sleeps the sleep of the just.
Professor H.C.Allen then said
It is remarkable fact that the efforts of the opponents to our system of practice, to prove that law of Similia a humbug by the writing of a work that should thoroughly expose it, completely uproot the heresy and thus prevent its dissemination, should have resulted in giving to our school two of its strongest defenders and ablest champions Dr. Quin, in Great Britain, and Dr. Hering in America. Commissioned to strike the budding truth a death-blow in its infancy, thy were themselves convicted and became enthusiastic converts.
The former as President and one of the founders of the British Homoeopathic Society, has done yeoman service in his native land, the land of Harvey Jenner and Sydenham while the latter, as one of the founders of the oldest medical society in America and its first President the American Institute as on of the founders of the first Homoeopathic College in the world, and its first Professor of materia Medica, has not only rendered heroic service to the Homoeopathic school, but has left a name, honored and revered wherever scientific medicine is known. Hering’s labors in the field of Materia Medica have been of a two-fold character, viz., his personal contributions- second only to those of Hahnemann in number and the contribution which through his magnetic enthusiasm that brilliant coterie of colaborers by whom he was surrounded, were induced to make.
To Hering more than to any other man are we indebted for the Materia Medica contributions of Carroll Dunham which are some of the clearest expositions and ablest differentiations of the mode of action of some of the remedies to be found in our literature. Dunham has said: In Constantine Hering I gained the most helpful, genial friend I have ever made; and few men were more capable of judging than Carroll Dunham.
But it is not so much the number of remedies which he has added to our Materia Medica great as they are so as the manner in which they are added for which we should be most thankful. Like Hahnemann, Hering grasped the basic principle upon which alone an enduring Materia Medica can be constructed, viz., that the positive facts of the prover shall be recorded in plain, untechnical language, free from theoretical speculations. Provings thus made are of the nature of lasting observations as fixed and unchangeable as the law of cure. This is the reason why the simple pure record of observed facts, which Hahnemann and his disciples recorded in the Materia Medica Pura, fifty years ago, free from theories and speculations of a physiological and pathological character are today as intelligible as available as well adapted to meet our wants in practice as when they left the Master’s hand.
Hering in our day, had the same material from which to construct a physiological theory of a drug that Hahnemann and his disciples had; in fact, the great advances made by the progressive sciences of physiology and pathology in the last fifty years, gave him a vast advantage over Hahnemann. But like Hahnemann, he confined himself simply to the recording of the fact, thus leaving each observer free to place his own construction upon the action of the drug. This is a work which cannot be delegated to another; because, as Dunham says; :The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer.
Next to Hering’s tireless never-flagging industry, the capacity to measure the significance of a fact has been equalled by but a few men our school has as yet produced, and excelled by none, save Hahnemann himself. That rare quality of the student of Materia Medica, possessed by Hering in such a remarkable degree, viz., the ability to detect the individual characteristics of a drug those finer points of difference not to be found in the provings of any other is that has rendered his labors of such lasting benefit to his fellows. It is this quality which has made his condensed Materia Medica the best work of ready reference yet produced in the Homoeopathic school, for the busy practitioner. This also is the first work of a standard character, in which the general anatomical divisions of our Materia, adopted by Hahnemann as a basis for the classification of symptoms, has been departed from. The rubrics it is true are increased in number, but they are admirably arranged to meet a twofold object: the condensation of numerous provings, and the classification of symptomatology for ready reference a want long felt in practice.
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,