It was my habit to make, year after year, my pilgrimage to this holy shrine, and I always left it highly satisfied with my gain. I learned my lessons in liberality and charity from Dunham: I learned from Hering to value the opinions of others, and to despise those who preach one thing and practice another. Any falsity was an abomination to his straight-forward manner, and the language he then could use, was more forcible than elegant.
He always felt happy in the midst of the young and rising generation, and none ever left him without an encouraging word. Envy was unknown to him, for he knew that he had done his duty to humanity, and no one was more pleased than Father Hering with the increase of our Homoeopathic literature. The one great fault which this master had, was that he tried too much, began too much, as if life would last forever. His restless mind knew only work, work, work, and if tried of one thing there were many wakeful ganglia in that large brain, suggesting more work to be performed, and to be accomplished. For this reason we find in that glorious room, up stairs, and in those safes treasures garnered, which he intended to give to us, piece by piece; but three score years and ten, perhaps four more, the allotted time, is not enough, and though a gracious Providence spared him for so long to us, the clock has run down.
Let us honor the memory of Constantine Hering by continuing those masterly works which he mapped out for us during his life time.
Thus, though departed, he still lives in us and with us. Remarks of Dr. Timothy F. Allen:
Some of our colleagues can speak of the departed hero, whom we commemorate this evening, as a fellow-laborer, as one with whom they toiled in their earlier as well as during their more mature years.
To me, he seems like a pioneer, one whose labors were to be built upon, one who prepared the way, hewed straight paths through the thickets and let light into dark places.
This feeling toward him had birth when one winter’s evening, twenty years ago, my revered preceptor, Dr. P. P. Wells, took me to a meeting at the house of Dr. Joslin, the elder, on the corner of University Place and Thirteenth Street. How vividly I remember that evening, the calm, philosophical Joslin, the earnest Bayard, the positive Wells, the dogmatic Reisig, the keen-eyed Fincke and the enthusiastic life and centre of all-Hering, I was the only young man present, fresh from the University, full of the teachings of the scholastics, full of the old-time prejudices of my father.
That group of men, that enthusiasm of Hering, the whole tone of thought was so different from that of the schools, and I was forced to believe in a vitalizing truth in Homoeopathy. I ventured one little remark to Dr. Wells during the evening. Dr. Reisig was explaining some preparation of Castile soap, which he considered a specific for burns. He was in the habit of applying it locally and of giving a potency internally, and Dr. Hering was combating the local application. I asked Dr. Wells, almost in a whisper, But does it cure? Cure, thundered Reisig, of course it does. Hering looked at me, smiled and said, That was a good question. My heart warmed toward him, and from that time we were friends, though he did not always approve of my way of doing things.
Hering was always searching for truth; he despised no contribution to his large knowledge, however humble its source; he proved all things and held fast to that which is good. One cannot but be impressed by the avidity with which he sought for the truth, while reading his earlier contributions to homoeopathic literature. His first article is in the Archiv fuer Homoeopatische Heilkunst, for 1828, a letter to the editor, Dr. Stapf, from Surinam, dated September 28th, 1827. Prefacing the letter the editor remarks: These communications from Dr. Hering, of Dresden, who is well-known to several readers of this Archiv and highly esteemed as a zealous naturalist and warm friend of Homoeopathy now, for more than a year journeying to South America studying the natural sciences and medicine, deserve a place in this journal on account of interesting notes concerning the diseases of those countries and their homoeopathic treatment; they will also be peculiarly welcome to those more nearly related to him, giving, as they do, information concerning his life and doings.
First he gives us a careful analysis of seasickness and his experience with Cocculus, 12th followed by Staphisagria 30th. In succeeding communications he relates his experience with Leprosy, the symptoms of which he studied most carefully. The enthusiasm with which he took up the study of Psorinum-the provings of which Hahnemann reluctantly, and after patient investigations allowed to be published-was characteristic of the man; now was his restless mind content. He seemed to see boundless possibilities in the Nosodes, and took up the fascinating, but fatal doctrine of Isopathy, and enlarged, embellished and generalized from it, till he found the bottom of soft, slimy ooze, which he then struggled out of and hastened to wash clean off his skirts. In his latter years he saw clearly that it was fatal to Homoeopathy, and, like a true servant he retracted all he had said in its favor.
I can testify, with thousands, to his large heartedness, to his never failing generosity. In the special work on Materia Medica which I have undertaken, he has always been ready, even anxious, to help me; from the time when I translated his provings of Aloes, Apis, etc., for the American Homoeopathic Review, to my latest task, I am proud to acknowledge with gratitude the encouragement and assistance of Dr. Hering. We differed in some things and he has berated me soundly for differing, but his help continued.
His faith in the homoeopathic law of cure was boundless; his faith in his friends almost equally boundless; by nature, trusting as trustworthy, he gathered from everybody, and his shelves, groaning beneath the weight of the harvest, testify to his unwearied industry.
We shall do higher honor to Constantine Hering by imitating his example. Could he have desired more than that? There has never been a time in the history of Homoeopathy when it was more necessary to hold fast to the first principles of our faith; never a time when more were inquiring the way to save the sick than now, and shall we relax our firm grasp upon what we know to be right, for the sake of gaining popularity? Hering knew, as we know, that the chief principles of Hahnemann are laws of nature. Let us then imitate him. Let us be enthusiastic, Let us be scientific. Let us be industrious. Let us seek the good that is in everyone and help one another. So shall we honor Hering.
Dr. Joseph Finch said:
Mr. President: I wish this evening to add my humble testimony to the worth of the great and good man who has gone from us.
In regard to the death of our friend Dr. Constantine Hering, there can be but one sentiment, one feeling, viz., that of loss, irreparable loss, the extent of which we do not realize tonight, but shall more and more in the days to come.
The immediate circle in which he lived and moved has parted with its brightest light and its sincerest friend: and those who have only known him through the medium of his zealous labors with his pen, missing the profoundness of his research and the unusual clearness of his statements, will gather up and cherish what he has given, with a double care.
Homoeopathy has lost her eldest son, her clearest-sighted pioneer, her bravest defender. He was her Nestor in America, and when she writes his epitaph many words will be required, each a picture in itself, to describe the hero she has lost, the friend she has buried.
His unparalleled devotion to Homoeopathy was not the outgrowth of fidelity to a school, nor could it be justly attributed to the impulses of an ambitious nature. It was founded in the deepest conviction of an earnest heart, and stimulated by a manly love of truth.
He was not partisan in feeling. He was not a hobbyist, but a scientist that commanded the admiration of his friends and the respect of his foes. But he has gone, and our grieving shall be tempered by submission to the will and wisdom of that Divine Providence which gave him to us at the first, which sustained him so long and well in his professional career, and hath in the full harvest-time gathered him so peacefully to the garner of refined and ripened life-his home in the skies.
Dr. C. Th. Liebold said:
Mr. President: I am not a convert to Homoeopathy; I have been brought up in the faith. In fact, among my earliest recollections is the magic relief of a very severe pain by two or three diminuative sugar pellets, administered after careful selection, in Hering’s Homoeopathicher Hausarzt, (Domestic Physician) by my parents. I have never wavered in my faith; neither the ridicule nor the scientific contempt of greater or lesser medical and non-medical lights has ever, for a moment, been able to extinguish the memory of the fact that it did help. Not that I have ever remained faithful to the smallest possible pellets or to any other dictum about the dose, but nothing has struck me more forcibly or made me a more confirmed homoeopath than the attendance on lectures on Allopathic Materia Medica. On one side the advice never to give more than just enough to cure; on the other from Arsenic down to Zingiber, how much a patient could possibly bear without doing him serious harm, and so-and-so much will kill a large dog, while so-much will finish a puppy.
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,