Remarks of Dr. E. Carleton, Jr.:
My president: In response to your request to speak, I will offer my humble tribute to the character of our departed friend, by saying that I felt love and reverence to him.
I remember, as if it were but yesterday, the first time we met. It was in his office as physician and patient. He stood and looked at me calmly, while I related my symptoms. Then silently turning to his desk, he prepared three powders and handed them to me with directions: I left him in wonder, for my case had troubled the physician who had sent me, and I had expected a long search. The remedy produced a violent aggravation, and I recollect that wonder temporarily gave place to a state of mind akin to resentment.
Recovery followed, and so did my promised report to the doctor. The recital of the success of his prescription caused his face to smile all over, which ended with a hearty, genial laugh and he said, That was Aloes; it was low; it was the five hundredth. Then seating himself and motioning me to a chair, he went on to relate how he had suffered similarly when proving the drug, and made me promise to write out and give to him a history of the case, which I afterwards did, and informed me that the medicine had been potentized for him by Doctor Fincke, from a choice bit of crude material furnished by himself. He then enlisted me in the search for a pure drug that he had not been able to procure, for approving. He was a noble man.
Soon after that we met again in the college lecture room, as professor and student of medicine. His subject was Natrum muriaticum and as the golden words fell from his lips, I made every endeavor to preserve and profit by them. It was my good fortune to hear his lectures upon various drugs, which in the hands of many prescribers have verified the provings, and demonstrated his sagacity in arranging them. I have often thought of him when difficulties would beset me in the sick-room; and I knew that his contributions to our literature have enabled me to save lives. For this his memory is sacred to me.
But, Sir, I must not detain you with my extended remarks. You do not care to hear more of my personal experiences. It is enough to say that I loved and revered Constantine Hering; and when he died, I felt that I had lost one of my best friends.
PHILADELPHIA MEMORIAL MEETING
A large memorial meeting was held on Sunday evening, October 10th, 1880, at the Hahnemann Medical College, in Philadelphia. The following report was submitted on behalf of the County Society:
We recognize in the decease of Dr. Hering the loss of one pre-eminently adapted by nature and education to be a leader in the early struggles and sacrifices of a new medical dispensation. Cultured in literature and in general science, learned in all the medical wisdom of the allopathic fathers, careful in the formation of his opinions, zealous for the advancement of his chosen profession and ambitious to excel in the practice of his art, we yet find him fearlessly investigating the principles of a new system, accepting without reserve and without hesitation the overwhelming testimony to the truth of homoeopathy, flinging aside the temptations of professional honor and political preferment, fearlessly asserting his liberty of medical opinion and action in the presence of an arrogant and intolerant profession and in the face of his king, and deliberately casting his lot with the derided and persecuted pioneers of a new and hated system, devoting all his talents and energies to the perfection and dissemination of the newly-discovered art of healing, laboring with heart and hand and brain for its establishment over a whole continent: unswerving in his adherence to its teachings, unflinching in its defence and untiring in all labors for its advancement he seemed ever to realize that he had been raised up for this, his heaven-appointed work. We rejoice that he was permitted to witness the vast results toward which his own Herculean labors had so largely contributed, the shaken foundations of the old medical superstructure, the triumphant vindication of the once despised system of Hahnemann, the establishment of its hospitals, its colleges and its journals, the organization of its societies over the whole civilized world, and the spread of its beneficent influence by thousands of educated physicians into millions of homes.
We, his fellow members of the Society, among whom he walked and taught and labored for so many years, who enjoyed his intimate personal acquaintance and counsel, are proud to express our appreciation of his personal character, and his abounding services in the cause of progressive medicine, the cause of suffering humanity. We shall ever hold his name, his work and his worth in warmest remembrance, and our posterity will rise up to do him honor.
As expressive of the feelings of the Faculty of the Hahnemann Medical College, the following was communicated by Dr. O. B. Gause, Registrar:
We have contemplated the death of our venerable friend and co-laborer, Constantine Hering, M. D., Emeritus Professor of Homoeopathic Institutes and Materia Medica, with unfeigned sorrow, believing that the Hahnemann College has lost its brightest light, and the Homoeopathic school its most profound and learned exponent.
Dr. C. Pearson, of Washington, spoke as follows:
It was not my good fortune to be as intimately acquainted with the deceased as many who may be present this evening, but my acquaintance was sufficient to induce me to travel over a hundred miles to meet with you, his more immediate neighbors, on this memorial occasion, and deplore with you the worth we have lost. That Dr. Hering should not live longer in the body was not at all strange; for eighty years he has seen the seasons come and go; over half a century he had devoted to the relief of suffering humanity, he had heard the call for help come up from a thousand tongues, and in response to this, he had endured the summer’s heat and the storms of winter.
With the key of energy and application and the lamp of knowledge, he penetrated the arcana of nature, and searched through her storehouse for the hidden remedy, which, when discovered, became the property of the entire world; his humanity was co-extensive with the race, which he left wiser and better for having lived and thought:
A life thus long for others’ comfort spent, Is human nature’s grandest monument.
The end is not yet. Hering still lives, like the dynamic property of his Lachesis; and a hundred years hence the child will be born that will bless his name for the relief this medicine affords.
But he has gone to that great institution of learning where we, his pupils, will, ere long, like irregular school-boys, be dropping in one by one.
And who then shall say so much of us? No one; and yet I hope it may be justly said of each and all, that we contributed our mite of influence to that reform of medicine which portends to the afflicted a brighter and happier day.
But while we aspire to this, let us not forget that change is not always improvement, that belief is only temporal, while truths are eternal, that these are the golden particles that glitter in the sands of time; and the friction of years but adds to their lustre. If we cannot furnish another to that cluster of diamonds Hahnemann discovered, and Hering cut and set in his starry crown, let us not wilfully or ignorantly tarnish their brightness. If we attempt to travel the road they trod, let us be careful which end we take, for they certainly tend to opposite results, and it is better to be right with a minority, than with the majority wrong.
Fourscore years is a ripe age to attain, and yet it is far too short to reform a world; truth is of slow growth, and requires care and painstaking, and if it rise again when crushed to earth, more than one generation may be required for it to do
so.
Those truths then left us by Hahnemann, and so ably promulgated by Hering, Boenninghausen and other pioneers gone before, should be guarded by us with jealous care, and as we too will soon pass to that bourne from which no traveller returns, may the young men who succeed us realize that truth is ever the same, that time alters it not, not is it the better or worse for being of ancient or modern tradition.
It may be possible that no improvement could be suggested on the order of nature but in some respects it seems unfortunate that the knowledge and experience accumulated during a long life of patient industry, could not be bequeathed to others to be used and added to during their natural lives, and them to pass like a landed estate to the next of kin; but this seems not to be a part of the programme, or panorama of human life, but whoever would excel in knowledge and usefulness must do so by his own individual efforts. And however economical of time, his life, however protracted will be too short to attain perfection.
We are only prospectors in the field of science. One finds a treasure here, another there, these become the support of the indolent, the wealth of the wise, and the sport of the ignorant; the patient toiler in the mine of knowledge is rarely appreciated. Few take him by the hand and wish him Godspeed; he is called visionary, foolishly demented. Sir Joshua Reynolds says: present and future time may be regarded as rivals, and he who solicits the one, must expect to be discountenanced by the other, and as men are the creatures of the age in which they live, not its creators, it is not difficult to see why they should desire, and court the commendation of their own times more than that of succeeding ages; for with such tenacity does mind cling to the dead traditions of the past, that the iconoclast is rarely popular during his lifetime; but it is the bold adventurer on unknown seas that tells us of other continents;a nd future ages build his monument.
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,