So runs the world away. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. It is unfortunate that among the unnumbered millions That strut and fret their hour upon the stage And then are heard no more.
So many should be poor players, hence, when after life’s fitful fever a good man sleeps well, it becomes so difficult to fill his place.
But though a standard-bearer in our cause has fallen, out flag must not be lowered, and when we too shall have followed him, others, I doubt not, will close up the ranks, and still keep it floating in the sunlight of eternal truth.
Hering’s earth life is ended, his conveyance was ready before ours, and he is still in our advance; we shall miss him. but;
He hates him Who upon the rock of this rough world Would stretch him out longer. The night dew that falls though in silence it weeps, Will brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps: And the tear that we shed thought in silence it rolls, Will long keep his memory green in our souls.
Dr. Ad. Lippe then spoke as follows;
Like children who have lost their father, we meet here this evening to express our grief over the loss we suffered by the death of Dr.Constantine Hering.
As mourning children we vividly remember what the departed was to all of us; we remember how he instructed us, how he taught us by precept and example, the way to obtain a perfect knowledge of the healing art, how he advised us to study the writings of Samuel Hahnemann; and we remember with gratitude his ceaseless labors in the field of Materia Medica.
Dr.Hering was chosen among many able medical students at Leipzig to write a pamphlet, and in it to expose the follies and absurdities of a new system of therapeutics by Samuel Hahnemann, and with the honesty of purpose which always guided him through life he undertook that task; his first step was to study Hahnemann’s Organon of the Healing Art, and then he tried the correctness, or the falsity, of the teachings by the experiment.
The only true, the experiment, convinced him at the follies and absurdities of the prevailing allopathic school of medicine were exposed by Hahnemann, that a rational system of the healing art was revealed to the world by him. Homoeopathy had slowly gained ground in those days. The medical student who, in 1824 dared to declare his conviction of the truth of Homoeopathy, over all known systems of medicine, had to be a brave and fearless man.
Persecution followed Dr. Hering at once: his friend and benefactor who had expected him to ridicule and to demolish Homoeopathy, summarily dismissed him; distressing privations followed, but his faith was firm and not to be shaken by early personal adversities, no more than the progressive development of homoeopathy could be retarded by innumerable adversities and persecutions which all early adherents of it had to suffer. Finally Dr. Hering overcame these obstacles and he found a true friend in Professor Schoenlein, the father of a well classified pathology, and protected by him, the young student graduated at Wuerzburg. After teaching natural sciences and mathematics at Blochmann’s Institute at Dresden he obtained an appointment from the Saxon government as naturalist. We find him at Surinam, in South America, making collections for the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences, at Dresden. As an eminent naturalist the Saxon government provided for him, but he was, almost against his will, compelled to practice the healing art in Surinam. The Saxon government demanded that all of his time be devote to his appointment as naturalist, and were displeased with his practice and the papers published by him in the homoeopathic journals; he had himself dismissed from the government service and was again thrown upon his own resources.
It was there and then, that Dr. Hering obtained the few drops of the poison of the Trigonocephalus Lachesis, and there that he published the first provings made of the healthy (on himself) and earned the everlasting gratitude of the profession, who thereby were enabled to cure sicknesses formerly considered incurable.
Again we find him devoted to the teaching of the healing art at the Allentown, Academy, (near Philadelphia) the first public institution of the kind chartered by a liberal government. The unselfish, self-sacrificing apostle, regardless of his own individual interests, resolved to fulfil his self-chosen mission to its full extent, and accepted a much smaller compensation for his laborious works to which he devoted all of his time and energies, tan was accorded forty years later to the Secretary of the American Institute of Homoeopathy.
The teaching of students of medicine, the publishing on Hahnemann’s Organon, and a Materia Medica, with a Repertory, in the English language, the proving of drugs and the publication of the medicinal virtues of Trigonocephalus Lachesis occupied his time. He finally had the gratification to see the diploma conferred by the Allentown academy upon its graduates, the first homoeopathic diplomas ever conferred, accepted at home and abroad. Dr. Wahle presented his diploma to the Papal government when he came to seek permission to practice Homoeopathy in the Papal States.
Later, Dr.Hering returned to Philadelphia, after Dr.William Wesselhoeft had been appointed President of the Academy.
With a large clientele which he found in Philadelphia, this indefatigable man added much to the further development of out healing art by the proving of new remedies and by perfecting and rearranging many proven ones. Not less active was he in guarding our school against innovations and perversions. Many posological papers were published by him in the Homoeopathic Journals, his witty sarcasm silencing those who tried to modernize Hahnemann’s plain teachings. He never rejected, a priori, apparently advanced ideas till he had patiently investigated the proffered claims of their superiority over established principles and rules accepted by the early followers of Hahnemann, but when no convincing proof of the correctness of such innovations could be established, either by argument or by the test of experiment, his powerful pen was brought into requisition and he very soon silenced these bold writers. One of his last acts was the signing of a paper declaring his unswerving faith in the essential principles of homoeopathy, and finally saying: If our school ever gives up the strict inductive method of Hahnemann. We are lost and deserve to be mentioned only as a caricature in the history of medicine. (North American Journal of Homoeopathy, August, 1880.)
As children who have here assembled to mourn the loss of a father, we can do no greater honor to his memory than to always remember this parting instruction and warning; and on this solemn occasion, let us resolve never to depart from the strict inductive method of Hahnemann, a method our departed friend followed most faithfully for more then half a century.
Dr. Henry N. Guernsey then addressed the meeting as follows: In rising to offer this tribute of respect to the memory of our departed colleague, allow me to dwell for a little while upon the early reminiscences of my acquaintance with him, which dates back to the days of my medical pupilage.
In the autumn of 1842, I matriculated in the Pennsylvania Medical College, which then occupied the very building in which we are now assembled, and I soon made the acquaintance of Mr.Husmann, a fellow student, who was then a private pupil of Dr.Hering, and later became his brother-in-law. My friend soon introduced me to the distinguished subject of this memorial whose office at that time, nearly forty years ago, was located at the North-west corner of Eleventh and Spruce Streets.
During the session Dr. Hering frequently came to our dissecting room to examine the viscera of the cadavera that he might the better establish the truth of some of his theories.
In my mind’s eye I now see as I saw him then-his erect and commanding figure, his eager and piercing eye, his massive brow, his well-shaped head, with long, black hair, and his whole appearance so clothed with dignity as to render him apparently unapproachable.
At our first interview, I discovered my mistake; for he proved so genial, so friendly, and so communicative, that we fraternized at once. Thus, I am proud to say, our fraternal relations continued to our last conference, which was only a few hours before his demise. During all these years it has been my good fortune to have free access to him, even to his private study, at almost any hour.
His active and inquiring mind led him to continually search for, and gather up, all facts, particularly if new and of recent occurrence. As an illustration, I will mention the following circumstance. A short time after I had located in Frankford, I as quiet astonished to find Dr. Hering at my door, early one morning, inquiring for the residence of a person who had been stung by a bee, whose sufferings had been published in the daily papers. I at once took him, in my carriage, to the house of the sufferer, where he carefully noted down every face and symptom developed by the bee sting. This case proved of great value in making up the pathogenesis of Apis mellifica, but it cost Dr. Hering the fatigue of a sixteen mile drive besides the loss of time to his professional duties of nearly the whole day. We all know the value of time to a physician in full practice. But for him, when in quest of knowledge, everything else had to give way’ time, money, strength, sleep, and all else were sacrificed for the sake of science and homoeopathy. Anything and everything for our cause, he was often heard to say.
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,