Cruelty to Animals. Pedigree.
A nobleman had a horse which angered him by becoming balky on the road. The owner of the horse, wishing to take revenge upon the beast, decided to imprison it within stone walls, so that the horse would die of hunger. For air was left a small window near the top of the prison, through which kind neighbours passed provisions to the animal to keep it alive. When the nobleman found this out he ordered the aperture to be closed. The neighbours muttered, revolted and formed a mob threatening the nobleman with violence. One of the men present, of humble birth, indignantly stepped forward and said: I too was born in the regular way, not dropped by the road side, but had a natural origin, the same as this nobleman. Let him take care’
Militia. The military system of Prussia, the formation of a militia for state protection, had its origin with General Washington. Papers containing his plans were found by some one in Washington, who afterwards went abroad and there introduced the system; the same as planned and made popular by Washington in this Country.
Liszt. Coal Mines. Railroads.
A man by the name f Liszt came to this country from Germany and opened coal-mines here. To him we are indebted for the use of coal for heating our houses and factories. He went back to Europe, poor as he had come. He there initiated the railroad system. He built the first railroad running from Leipzig to Dresden. Liszt was a great mechanic.
I am thinking of our Henry Carey (political economist, in Philadelphia) as being to Liszt what I am trying to be to Hahnemann, a promoter of his doctrines. Liszt was a brother-in- law to our Dr. Neidhard.:
Bricks.
When the first fire happened in Pittsburg, and while it was still raging, an enterprising young man went about making contracts to furnish bricks for rebuilding. He secured such workers as were homeless, and out of employ, and in a short time made an incalculable number of bricks, the sale of which made him a millionaire.
Thomas. Abscess.
Professor Thomas had his abscess opened by Doctors Macfarlan and Morgan. No pus was found. Hering says the so-called abscess should not have been tampered with. The surgeons were disappointed and at a loss for a diagnosis. The case has assumed a threatening aspect. Hering devoutly says: Our only hope is that Heaven will look kindly upon us and save him for us. Dr. Thomas desired the operation, hoping that a discharge of pus would relieve him. Doctors Raue and Hering both disapproved, thinking that well-chosen remedies would have done better, especially if given in higher potency.
Bute.
My friend and former student, Dr. George Bute, who practised in Nazareth, Pa., had been sold, upon his arrival from Germany, to a man who paid his passage money on board ship. A Catholic priest, who accompanied Bute on the voyage, had promised to pay his fare, but vanished immediately upon their arrival to parts unknown. The man who took the stranded passenger into his service was named Pratt, a Philadelphian, who made him a gardener.
By another man Bute was brought free from Pratt, came among the Moravians at Bethlehem, Pa., and was thence sent as missionary to the Moravian Colony in Suriname, South America. There he made my acquaintance and I took him as a student and for eighteen months taught him anatomy, physiology and materia medica. It had been Bute’s intention to practise allopathy, but the Moravians, who had been under my care, said, We are homoeopaths.’ Before he came to be a student of homoeopathy he had been sick. He recovered and was thereby converted to the cause. He later became dissatisfied with life in the tropics and came North, to Philadelphia, where, in one of the hospitals, he distinguished himself by curing the cholera, which raged there epidemically with frightful mortality. He, sometime later, while the cholera was still raging, urged me to come North and help him to cope with it.
Croup. Belladonna. Arsenicum.
In five years I have not given either Hepar or Spongia, considered favourite remedies in croup. Generally Belladonna for the spasmodic variety, and Arsenicum where there is great weakness, or a suppressed urticaria, as sometimes happens.
Hydrocephalus.
My first death this year is a case of hydrocephalus which I treated in consultation with Dr. Martin. A puny child, born at seven months. The remedies given were: Rheum, Aconite, Ipecac, and Sepia. None was of any avail. This morning when I arrived the ominous white ribbon was on the door. The parents seemed to be glad, rather than otherwise; particularly the father.
Martin.
Dr. Martin returned from a visit to Boston, where he was hospitably received at a meeting of the Institute. There was a brilliant reception. Council had donated twenty-five hundred dollars for a grand levee; this, in spite of the mayor, an allopathic physician. There was also a banquet given by the Massachusetts Homoeopathic Medical Society.
Dr. Ludlam of Chicago was president of the meeting. At the banquet toasts were proposed to the city, the Cause, the President of the U. S., the Legal profession, and the Military, all of which were responded to by men of prominence in these branches. A toast to our College was responded to by Martin. Dr. Gause also made a speech. The programme included sight seeing to places of interest for visiting physicians.
The next meeting is to be held in Chicago. Hering says: Then Philadelphia must return the compliment, with a grand concert, a promenade, a collation and a hop, and the usual banquet.
College.
Our College has promise of a glorious future. Doctors Carroll Dunham and Timothy F. Allen, of New York, have offered to give one lecture each a week, gratis, in our next winter course. The New York Homoeopathic College is about to break up, which will probably increase the number of our students in Philadelphia.
Martin proposes that Dunham should lecture on Institutes. He still thinks that Morgan, for want of discretion, is the one member of the faculty who is likely to injure the cause.
Fair.
Our friends in Boston are taking an interest in the Fair. They propose having a Boston table, sponsored by Doctors Payne, Wesselhoeft, etc.
The Infected Hand. Arsenicum.
The following is a translation from a letter, by me, printed in a German journal, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1860, edited by F.A. Guenther, in Langensalsa. The heading is Homoeopathy is dead I had left Leipzig. After another year had passed, homoeopathy was still living, although I myself had nearly died, from an infected hand, received when making a dissection; an accident which has carried off many a young physician by a horrible death. The dissection was made upon the exhumed body of a suicide, a job side-stepped by others, and over which I lingered a bit too long, while dabbling among the entrails with a partly healed cut on the forefinger of the right hand, thinly covered by a scab.
Before making the post mortem I washed my hands in hot soapy water which left the cut uncovered. A man from Jena had asked for a dissection of the kidneys, with ureters and bladder, and all that belonged to the specimen, which I promised to make for him.
After several days my finger began to show signs of infection. I was given an opportunity to observe, on myself, that malady against which leeches, calomel and hellstone (nitrate of silver) had proved powerless in allopathic hands. I refused amputation, because with a crippled hand I would have had but little show of becoming an obstetrician or a surgeon. I preferred death to this. I was, at the time, still deeply sunk in that superstitious belief that external diseases could not be reached by internal remedies, least of all when given in small doses.
I was saved by one of Hahnemann’s earliest students who persuaded me to try Arsenic, in ridiculously small doses. When, after taking a few doses of the remedy on my tongue, a sense of relief from the horrible affliction began to pervade my body, the last obstruction that had made me blind to the rising sun of the new healing art vanished before my eyes.
I still have the finger; it is the same with which I write this, and more than all I have devoted my entire hand, body and soul, to the cause which Hahnemann gave to suffering humanity. His teachings had not only restored my bodily health but gave me a new purpose in life. And it was to me they told: Homoeopathy is dead’ Many times since, The dead have buried their dead.’ Progress goes on. The world is moving.
June 15, 1869.
Fair.
I assisted all day at a Strawberry Festival to raise money for the Fair. Grand decorations. Beautiful flowers. Baskets, bouquets and wreaths. Cakes, ices and strawberries in profusion. Between three and four hundred people in attendance in the afternoon. In the evening the hall was crowded to overflowing. A grand success. People enthusiastic. Hosts of beautiful young ladies. Flower-selling girls. Rebecca at the well selling lemonade. Auctioning off of cakes. Dancing. A great advertisement for the coming Fair.
June 16, 1869
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,