Truly of him it can be said in the language of old: And thoushalt be a blessing, and in thee shall the families of the earth be blessed.
Friends, the unfolding of the prophetic scroll shall fully establish history, for already has he become the father of a great nation.
MEMORIAL ADDRESS TO KANSAS PHYSICIANS. Dr. Henry W.Roby spoke as follows:
Friends: There is a pause in our labors; a break in our ranks; a shade on the Stygian river. Constantine Hering, the pupil and intimate friend of Hahnemann, the venerable Nestor of Homoeopathy in America; the unrivalled scholar, philosopher and author in the new school of medicine; the most successful practitioner, and the ablest medical counsellor of his age, has gone to his final rest at the age of eighty-one years. And yet, as was said of the great statesman, Thiers: He died too young by a score of years.
Like Goethe’s his grandest works were the last. His massive brain and untiring hands had nearly finished the crowning glory of his life-work-the most masterly piece of medical authorship ever given to the world.
Like the immortal Lincoln, he died before God, or circumstances had created a successor large enough to fill his place in the world. But nature is rich in compensatory laws. The cause which creates a great leader, like a Luther, a Buonaporte, a Thiers, a Bismarck, a Washington, a Lincoln or a Hahnemann in one age or generation, will be carried forward through the succeeding ages or generations by their disciples and followers.
A great leader in the cause of the twin-sisters, Humanity and Homoeopathy, has but recently died in Philadelphia, and today physicians, by thousands, and their patrons by millions, scattered all over the world, sincerely mourn his death. But there is left to us this consolation, that the cause which he led is strong enough, at his death, and well enough officered, to march steadily forward to final and glorious triumph, without the further inspiration of a great individual leadership. So, a detachment buries the fallen leader and decorates his grave, while the great army marches on without halting, for the cause is greater than the leader.
As inductive philosophy no longer needs a Lord Bacon for leader, or astronomy a Galileo or a Copernicus, so Homoeopathy no longer needs the personal inspiration of Hahnemann, its original grand master in Europe, or Hering his co-laborer in America. It now marches steadily on to the drum-beat of principle under the influence of a demonstrated and ever demonstrable truth. Whenever truth involves enough of human interest to start it on its march around the world, if it does not find in waiting a man sufficiently large for a captain-general, it takes one from the common walks of life, and enlarges him sufficiently for the great work of leadership.
And Nature seems to have no regular rule for the choice of men for leaders. She takes a tinker, a printer, a cobbler, a railsplitter, a tanner or a student, and so sharpens his vision, that he can see the new truth which is marching along through his day and generation, so enlarges his intellect that he can grasp and hold the truth, and so shape and energize tongue and pen that he can show to the world the strength and beauty of the principle he has apprehended, and its correlations to other great truth in the world. In one case she takes a mechanic, puts him into a bathtub which overflows, and he straightway leaps out and cries Eureka Eureka In another she leads a dreamer into an orchard and drops an apple at his feet, and in the light of that falling apple he thinks the law of gravity.
She takes a schoolmaster of Padua, sets him stargazing and his trembling tongue informs an astonished world that all the heavenly bodies, our earth included, are wheeling through immense orbits, in immeasurable space, and also revolving on their own axes. And thus the science of astronomy is born even under the shame and humiliation of a compulsory recantation. Again, nature takes a poor humble student, leads him along the old paths of knowledge, through the labyrinthine mysteries and utter chaos of old medicine, and then leads him on into that clearer light which gives to the world a scientific, perfect guide to the choice of drugs for the cure of disease. And then she crowns him with leadership in a grand reformation of a human cause.
And thus, through the long reach of ages, one human interest after another, one great fact, or truth, or principle after another is developed and established in the minds and lives of men, of communities and races.
But Nature seems to be never in haste. It took twenty-two hundred years of the slow coaching of old medicine to develop a Harvey and to establish in the minds of men the fact of the circulation of blood in the human organism. And it took almost two centuries longer to establish nature’s law of drug-action on the human system, and to the world the law of cure. The very discovery of that law had to wait for the discovery and development of inductive philosophy, for only by its processes could the law of cure be discovered and fully demonstrated. That law is now incontestably established on an absolutely scientific basis, and today it challenges all of the scientific tests known to men, to disprove its correctness. And Hahnemann its real discoverer, and Hering its wise elaborator, can be, and are, both, called from labor to rest. For years the profession has watched, with eager eyes, the progress of Dr. Hering’s life-work, almost in fear and trembling, lest he should not live to complete it. But life held on its course, and the indefatigable worker, through days and nights, and years of incessant study and toil brought the work nearer and nearer to completion. And when at last his work was done, his manuscripts completed and the press began to turn out his volumes, the fiat of well done was issued from on high, and he was suddenly called away from his proof- sheets to everlasting rest.
Others could read the proof and he was spared that labor. His work was done. But he lived to write the master medical work of the work of the world, which will soon issue from the press, fitly named Guiding Symptoms.
Unlike the Mystery of Edwin Drood, the hand of its creator guided the pen to the end of its last chapter, though proof readers, pressmen and binders have their work still to perform.
Homoeopathy, under the leadership of Hahnemann and Hering, reinforced by an already grand army of coadjustors, has wrought a grand and beneficent reform in medicine, and conferred inestimable blessings upon the world. It no longer needs any champion defenders. It is a great and well established fact in the world. It has already become aggressive, has changed the field of conflict and the front of battle, has carried the contest into the enemy’s country and put gouty old medicine on the defensive, and compelled it to adopt so many changes and improvements, and abandon so many barbarities and cruel and dangerous devices in its methods, that could Galen, Paracelsus, Hippocrates, Paris, Cullen or Sydenham be called from their graves today, they would have a thousandfold more trouble to recognize their disciples than did Rip Van Winkle to recognize his daughter, or his dog, after his twenty years of sleep. Hahnemann and his followers have achieved a deeper and broader and sounder knowledge of Materia Medica in the past eighty years than old physic has done in eighteen centuries.
Still the world moves, and even now the sleepy disciples of Galen are walking up and announcing with a great flourish of trumpets to the world, as new discoveries in medicine, facts which Hahnemann announced over eighty years ago.
Fortunately the world is already astir in all the great camping grounds of philosophy, science, art, theology, law and medicine; it is waking up the Rip Van Winkles all along the line, and demanding from them more intelligent and scientific methods, more light and better results. And when the masses demand better lawyers, better preachers, better doctors and more intelligent methods, the demand is sure to be responded to. If the people demand better quality in books, of food, of raiment, of merchandise, there will not be long wanting live merchants and tradesmen who will find, or create a way to supply the demand.
A hundred years ago there went up from an already long- suffering humanity a cry for release from old medical superstitions and barbarities, and for the introduction of a more humane and scientific medicine, one that could give a reason, not only for its existence, but its methods, and already the whole medical world- the most superstitious of all worlds- is revolutionized, and half a million of active brains and busy hands are toiling eagerly to fulfil the demand. Many of them are among the old sleepers, and we see, almost daily, some of them rubbing the scales from their eyes, dropping their shackles of prejudice, coming to the front and joining the ranks of Homoeopathy. Order is being evolved out of chaos, system out of confusion, light out of darkness, and the cry of the world for a safe and wise medical system is receiving its answer.
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,