6th. As an author, we remember the great number and excellence of the productions of his pen, each bearing in clear characters the impress of the individuality and genius of the writer, the whole making a series of unexampled extent, interest and value. We remember these as abounding in compact thought, with facts contributed to our knowledge, with suggestions of relationship of these to other facts and to each other; all so luminous with the effluence of genius, and so astonishing by reason of the great labors they disclose. We remember that it is to these labors that the literature of Homoeopathy is indebted for more than half its wealth.
7th. As a man, we remember him as largely endowed by nature with the noblest qualities; frank, generous, affectionate, true, noble in his aspirations, loving the good and hating all that was mean, he has left to us a memory to which we can always recur with pleasure and profit. As the embodiment of great knowledge and learning, by his death he impresses us with a sense of great loss, and we are constrained to feel, and to say, we shall never look upon his like again.
At the same meeting Dr. Samuel Lilienthal, of New York, spoke as follows:
Will you allow me, in seconding these resolutions, to say a few words about our departed friend. One thing which endeared him to all those who were acquainted with him was the great encouragement he always held out to the young. There was no difference manifested in him, no matter who it was that came. Anyone who came to him poor went away rich. Another thing which always admired so much in Constantine Hering was that you never heard him say, Homoeopathy will go down. He knew, as one of the founders of Homoeopathy, that the legacy was left in good hands, and I am sure our young men will take pride in following such a good example as that which Constantine Hering left to them. I remember on one occasion he said. I have no fears for homoeopathy; we shall mix with other schools, and I am pretty sure that the others schools, will come to us. Dr. Hering died in harness At six o’clock on the evening of his death he made his last prescription. It was a beautiful trait in his character that he knew the great resources of the Materia Medica and when others despaired he was hopeful. His memory should be sacred to us.
MEETING OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA
The President, John K.Lee, concluded his address with the following words:
As an appendix to these desultory thoughts, I would ask your permission to pay a brief tribute to our later colleague and collaborator, the illustrious Dr.Hering. With natural ambition of a high order, strengthened and developed by careful culture, he, in early life, for the purpose of refutation, applied himself to the study of Homoeopathy and as his logical mind advanced in this investigation and he turned the clear light of reason upon its alleged principles. and placed their proofs into the crucible of experience, the vigor of his prejudice relaxed and gave way to convictions, and these convictions gradually hardened into firm belief; like Paul who went out to persecute saints, h renounced his hostility and became the champion of a new medical faith. Placing himself in communication with Hahnemann, he received a full revelation of this truth and its corollaries, and imbued with the sentiments of his master and an ardent desire for their triumph, he sought an asylum in the New World, where under the protecting aegis of our free institutions, he could accomplish his mission without embarrassment or interference.
Here, for nearly half a century, with untiring industry and zeal he prosecuted his researches, and from perennial fountain of his pen flowed a continuous stream to fertilize the seed he had planted; and ere his great heart had ceased its pulsations, his eyes were ravished with a view of the waving harvest as a reward of his benevolent and useful labors.
Truly a great man has fallen-great intellectually, and great in simplicity and grandeur of character, greater still in the possession of those moral attributes which elevate man to that t exalted plane where he can abnegate himself and make all personal consideration subordinate to the higher and holier interests of a common brotherhood.
His last moments were a fitting climax to his distinguished labors, since amid the undisturbed repose and endeared associations of his study, surrounded by his unpublished manuscripts and other evidences of his unremitting toil, he at once ceased to write and to live.
He requires no marble shaft to preserve the reward of his life or to tell the story of his achievements, for is history is the warp and woof of nearly every page of our literature; his memory will be cherished by thousands yet unborn, and his fame will only brighten by the lapse of time.
While we may not be able to receive the mantle that has fallen from his shoulders, we can imitate the brilliant example of his devotion to the cause he so ably espoused; and ere his lifeless form will have faded into dust and the wintry winds wail their plaintive requiem over his grave, let us renew our vows of fidelity to Homoeopathy, and endeavor to realize, as he eminently did that He most lives who thinks most-feels the noblest-acts the best.
At the conclusion of the address, a committee consisting of Doctors J. H. McClelland, Aug. Korndoerfer and H. Detwiller was appointed to draft suitable resolutions of respect, and in due time the chairman of the committee presented the following:
The Homoeopathic Medical Society of Pennsylvania, in an annual session assembled, with unanimous voice adopts the following minute:
The death of Dr. Constantine Hering of Philadelphia, on the 23rd of July, 1880, is recognized as an event of signal import in the history of medicine. It marks the close of a life, remarkable for unflagging and long sustained industry in the cause of medical science and in promoting the good of his kind. With full recognition of his prodigious labors in the field of Materia Medica and Homoeopathic. Therapeutics, the attainments of Dr. Hering in general science and letters, entitle him to a high place among men of learning in this enlightened age.
This Society, therefore, records with willing hands its high appreciation of the distinguished dead, and with sentiments of high regard, offers heartfelt sympathy to the bereaved family.
THE NEW YORK COUNTY HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICAL SOCIETY Dr.Edward Bayard, of New York, long an intimate friend, made the following address at a meeting of the New York County Homoeopathic Medical Society on October 7th, 1880:
If a great man is one to whom God has given large gifts, and who has cultivated them to the extent of his powers for the best interests of his fellow-beings, then Constantine Hering was a great man.
He was not a money-getter. His powers did not work in the direction of accumulating property. He did not care to amass this world’s goods; but he wished to be rich in learning, especially in all that pertained to his profession.
He was logical, discriminating, a great lover of nature, and a close observer of her. He was a hard student, of unwearied industry. He sought Truth earnestly, and he found it. he made note of all his observations; hence he left behind him a large amount of valuable writing.
He was engaged at the time of his death in a great work, his Guiding Symptoms and would to God he had been permitted to finish that work; but it was otherwise ordered. I am told by those who knew his habits, that every sentence in that work was studied over, sometimes for hours, that its true meaning might be expressed. That he might lose no time, his writing desk and materials were placed close to the side of his couch, so that he could arise in the night, light the lamp and continue his work. As for recreation and amusement, he knew little of either outside of his profession.
While a subject of the Saxon Government he was commissioned to make collections as a naturalist in Surinam, South America. In the course of this study he found facts illustrating the truth of Homoeopathy, and gave account of them to a Homoeopathic journal in Germany. His government objected to this work as heterodox. Dr. Hering thought he ought not be controlled, in any respect, in the service of scientific truth. Upon the instant he resigned his commission and sought a free land, where his thoughts, or the expression of them for the advancement of his race, would not be controlled. He found such freedom in this country.
This showed his noble independence of character, and his earnest search and love of Truth, which would nor permit him to weigh against her a social position and a money consideration. He sought this New World to work, and to plow the field the providence of God assigned to him, with gifts to carry out fully and nobly his work, ere he was called away to be set in the heavens by the side of Hahnemann, Boenninghausen, Stapf and Jahr- a galaxy whose light will continue when the things of this earth and its monuments of brass and stone have crumbled.
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,