The introduction of the serpent poisons, in the magnificent proving of Lachesis marked an era of advance in our Materia Medica. It was violently assailed by the Pathologico physiological branch of the school, both in this country and in Germany, and the author accused of manufacturing the symptoms, etc. The old view entertained by toxicologists that the poison of serpents is digested by the gastric fluids and cannot manifest any poisonous properties when introduced into the living organism through this channel was first disproved by the proving of the attenuated poison of Lachesis and abundantly verified since.
Hempel’s Materia Medica, first edition page 1143 says The provings of the Lachesis virus have been instituted with very small quantities of the poison mostly with the hundreth up to the infinitesimal portion of a drop. It has therefore, become questionable with a great many and indeed as far as Germany is concerned, with almost all thinking homoeopathic practitioners, whether the almost interminable array of symptoms which Dr. Hering alleges to have been produced by the Lachesis poison, is not the work of fancy rather than actual observation. In spite of every effort to the contrary the conviction has gradually forced itself upon my mind that the pretended pathogenesis of Lachesis, which has emanated from Dr. Hering’s otherwise meritorious and highly praiseworthy efforts is a great delusion and that with the exception of effects with which this publication is abundantly mingled, the balance of the symptoms is unreliable.
The above was written in 1859, and it certainly was some gratification to Dr. Hering to have seen the verification of his proving in the succeeding twenty years, and his character of accuracy maintained.
The verifications of Provings of Lachesis opened the door for all of the other serpent as well as insect poisons; the principles involved being the same. Hence Crot., Naja, Apium virus, etc., have been accepted as proven.
As Hering was far in advance of his colleagues and contemporaries in the demonstration of the power of the attenuated remedy to produce genuine and reliable pathogeneses so he was in practical therapeutics. When he published his Analytical Therapeutics and Guiding Symptoms. He lived long enough to see his Lachesis proving verified in practice; and from Pisgah’s height he viewed the Canaan which the general profession may see in the next generation when there may b demand for those two works.
Let us emulate his virtues, and practice his never-tiring industry so that we may be able to contribute our mite to the common stock of knowledge.
MEETING IN CLEVELAND. OHIO.
On this occasion Dr. D.H.Beckwith made the following remarks:
We are called once more to bow with submission to the inscrutable will of Him, in whose hands are the issues of life and death, to mourn the loss of one, who during a long career, has distinguished himself in our profession as a writer a translator a teacher, a practitioner of medicine and a prover of drugs.
That mysterious roll of human fate slowly unfolds her book, page after guided by the unerring hand of time and calls us, one by one to a sphere of higher existence. It would be a strange neglect on the part of the medical profession if we would give no formal expression of our grief and sorrow at the death of one who has done so much for us all and while we mourn the loss of this great man we may also rejoice that such a man lived in our day. No future can rob him of his history and for many years his name shall be cherished, and his works be emulated.
Like the falling leaves of this beautiful October day, many of our physicians pass from the stage of existence and no public record is made of them while, on the other hand, history takes up our great men and holds them as precious jewels on her pages, embalm them in their records, and perpetuates their memory to generations yet unborn.
The profession will agree with me, without a dissenting voice, that Constantine Hering was a man of application to that science he loved so well. In his writing he had a keenness of vision, a power of observation accorded to few. He was devoted to his profession for over half a century, studying is always as a science, and practising Homoeopathy as taught by Samuel Hahnemann.
When I call up the name of him whom we eulogize tonight, it seems to me that he was an old good friend of mine, and that he was one of my teachers of Homoeopathy thirty years ago. At that time his name was familiar to all Homoeopathic physicians of the West. In the year 1850 and 1851 there were but few homoeopathic publications and books in the English language. Among those in my library were; 1st. Hering’s Domestic Physician.
2nd. Samuel Hahnemann’s Organon of Homoeopathic Medicine translated in the year 1849 from the last German edition, with suggestions and additional introductory remarks by Constantine Hering.
3rd. How to Study Materia Medica, and the Effects of the poison of Serpents.
4th. Chronic Diseases, their Specific Nature and Homoeopathic Treatment, with a preface written by Constantine Hering.
5th. Jahr’s Manual of Homoeopathic Medicine, in two volumes, with a preface from Hering, written in 1848. I regard this work of great value to the practitioner, as well as to the student of medicine.
In February 1851, the first number was issued of the North American Homoeopathic Journal, a Quarterly magazine of 148 pages, devoted to practical and to scientific articles. Constantine Hering was the editor-in-chief, and each number contained several articles from his pen.
From book acquaintance I had formed an exalted idea of Hering, as a writer and teacher of Homoeopathy. He was regarded as a practitioner of medicine, second to none. In the year 1863 I formed his personal acquaintance, and since that time have often met him. He was a ripe scholar, refined by study, cultivated by extensive foreign travel, and familiar with most of the leading Homoeopathists of the Old World. He was, at all times, able and willing to instruct those who were thrown in contact with him.
I regarded him as a man of positive qualities, untiring in his labors for his profession and true to the principles of Homoeopathy.
I well recollect a call at his office several years ago; he was not in his usual social mood, but seemed very indignant that so many homoeopathic physicians, in Philadelphia, had deviated from the teachings of Hahnemann and were practising a mongrel system of medicine.
He exhibited to me a list of homoeopaths, on one page, and the other class on the opposite in his remarks in regard to their practice, that I yet recollect the names as they appeared on the different pages. It was a source of deep regret to him that so much eclecticism was practised by those who were so intimately associated with him, in college, and in other work.
Mr. President, we all might have asked that a man so intellectual, so gifted in character, so true to his profession, might have been spared a little longer to have finished the work he was engaged in, and so near completed, but the Great Physician called him to a nobler and higher sphere for his future labors.
Waiving, on this occasion, all utterances of private sorrow, we unite this evening with our brethren in other cities, at this hour assembled, in placing high on the roll of professional honor, the name of Constantine Hering.
MEETING IN DENVER, COLORADO.
Dr. Burnham spoke as follows:
Fourteen years ago, last August. I first met Dr. Hering, in his home in Philadelphia. I found him a genial, generous-hearted, painstaking man, whose ambition and highest aspirations pointed to the present and future growth of the principles and practice of Homoeopathy.
AS a man, of the noblest types of his nationality, by birth, and whose life career has adorned and made illustrious the nationality of his adoption.
AS a scientist, the genius of his superior abilities numbered him among those of the largest attainments.
AS a theorist, he largely possessed the ability to prove, and practically apply, in science and in medicine.
AS a writer and author on medical subjects, he was one of the ablest and most industrious of his time.
AS a practitioner of the healing art, his eminent success gave him a world-wide reputation.
AS a pioneer of Homoeopathy in America, he has lived to see it rise from small beginnings, when its practitioners could be counted upon his finger’s ends, to be numbered by thousands, and whose patrons are found among the most cultured, refined and wealthy of the land, and whose literature, limited though it was in the primitive days of Homoeopathy, yet founded upon a principle as fixed and as potent as the fiat of its creation, has grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength, until it occupies no inferior place in the annals of medical science; whose institutions of learning, started first by his enterprise, nurtured by his care, as a lone representative for the teaching of the principles of the new science and art in medicine, are now to be found in nearly all of the large cities of the continent.
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,