In the evening while sitting at the table cutting slips for an index to Kafka’s book, Hering says: In Germany when a new book appears the students will say, Have you read So-and so’s new book?’ No? Then you have read nothing’
Wine
There is wine on the table. The doctor quotes the old German saying, Drei Maenner Wein (Three men wine). Two men must hold the third until he finishes drinking the sour wine.
A Satire. Homoeopathy vs. Allopathy. A Will. Ridicule. I wrote a satire. Allopathy vs. Homoeopathy.’ In it I pictured a man who dies and leaves a will. The day for reading the will is appointed. The doctors meet. They make Death president. A homoeopath, from America, is present who can work miracles. They ask him what he can do. He informs them that Spirits enable him to call up the dead. They ask for Hippocrates. The magician says the books must be at hand, and must be produced. They place them on the table. Hippocrates is invoked, appears and speaks. They next ask for Galen. His books are produced. Galen appears but talks about nothing but making money. They wish him dismissed. The magician, who is a homoeopath, whispers the word cholera’ into the ghost’s ear. The spectre vanishes. They next ask for Paracelsus, whose books are available. He speaks for homoeopathy. They now wish to see Hahnemann. He cannot be invoked because they have failed to produce his books.
The meeting adjourns. All disperse excepting the American who alone remains to hear a codicil read, which decrees that the money is to be divided among those who remain last at the conference. He is the only one left to hear the last of the will. The money which amounts to a sum well advanced on the road to a million cannot be inherited by the American because a division among one is not possible. There were prior bequests in the will, made void by the last codicil. One of these favoured any college that had not made any changes in its faculty in a certain number of years.
Some so-called homoeopaths did not escape well-merited castigation in this satire, one of many, which Dr. Herring wrote in defense of the cause. He gave it as his opinion that when a thing is due for annihilation nothing will prove so effectual as killing it with ridicule.
June 18, 1869
A Clinical Case. Warts on the Vocal Cords.
A patient, a young girl of thirteen, came to me today with a rasping, almost constant, distressing cough which makes the listener nervous. I sent her to Macfarlan for a laryngoscopic examination. He found a great many warts, like fig-warts growing on the vocal cords, almost obstructing the passage. The cough is caused by constant irritation of the pneumogastric nerve. If the warts could be cured the cough would cease. On account of a sycotic dyscrasia, and the warts, the patient received Thuja, in a high dilution.
Herring does not expect the case to recover, without an operation. Foreign bodies in the larynx, or trachea, he says, cause hepatization of the lungs.
A Clinical Case. A Foreign Body is the Larynx. Ethics.
A very bad, stubborn boy played with a metallic pencil-case which he accidentally swallowed. The metal tube had separated into three section at one end, by which it was held fast in the larynx. There were no immediate bad effects and nothing could be done with him at the moment. He would not admit having swallowed the pencil-case. Next day there was a slight cough, which grew worse on the following day. On the third day the cough had increased to a harsh bellowing sound. The family now called in two doctors who diagnosed croup, and gave the patient Phosphorus. Both were low potency prescribers. The patient not improving, I was again called. The mother asked if it was croup. I hesitated.She saw my hesitation and said: Doctor, is it a foreign body; could my son after all have swallowed the pencil-case?’ Yes, I said, that is it.’
It was too late then to perform an operation; the boy was already dying. Next morning I asked that a post mortem be made. Dr. W. carefully removed the larynx. I sent a member of the family from the room to procure a sponge. Dr. W. pocketed the specimen, which, afterwards, on being opened disclosed the metallic pencil-case. When the mother learned the truth she fainted, overcome by the thought that her child had died from neglect, when an operation might have saved his life.
I told the mother that the operation should have been done on the first day, which greatly angered W. who, for a long time remained my enemy, but later became friendly.
Some time after this episode Dr. Lippe and myself were called to attend Dr. Gosewisch, in Wilmington. We had to run to get the train. In my absence a Mr. Johnson, a rich type-founder, came to my office to ask me to call on his wife who was very sick. Not finding me he called on Dr. W. and informed him that Dr. Hering, who was his family doctor, was out of town, would be please come to see his wife. The doctor strutted about his office and said: It is about time that I stopped playing second fiddle to Dr. Hering’ And he refused to go.
Mr. Johnson went away with a heavy heart, but remembered that Dr. Kitchen did not live far away. He called on him. He had scarcely mentioned the sick wife and the name of Hering when Kitchen had his hat on, ready to make the visit. I turned the family over to him.
W. had come to Philadelphia an allopath. It was with great difficulty that he was persuaded to abandon the practice of giving castor-oil to women after childbirth. He was an obstetrician. I sent him many families, in fact set him up in practice.
On the day following the postmortem on the body of the boy who had swallowed the pencil W. took the specimen with him to his lecture room to show it to the students. He told them that on the previous day he had been in consultation with Doctors Hering and Neidhard, on the case, that both of them had diagnosed croup, that he alone had pronounced it a case of a foreign body lodged in the larynx.
Dr. W. has done a great deal for homoeopathy; neither could we have done without Lippe. It is only when men go too far, so as to injure the cause, that they must be checked.
Foreign Body in the Windpipe.
I had heard of the case of a young man who, in rough play with his sweetheart, took a ring off her finger with his mouth. The ring lodged in his windpipe where it remained for some time, just above the bronchial bifurcation. It frequently moved from one side to the other. He died, probably from inflammation and hepatization of the lungs; a martyr to his amorous playfulness.
Nemesis.
Retribution follows the misdeeds of people. It is not for us to judge, nor to malign. We should never quarrel with, or defame others, for personal reasons. Nor be jealous of them. My daughter Odeli often got angry when she thought others had stolen my thunder. I replied: Let them steal the thunder as long as I am left the lightning.
Rev, Brobst, of Allentown. I once asked Brobst to correct me if I had made a misstatement as to his ancestry, in which I declared that it was his great, great, great grandfather who had come over from Germany. That is the exact truth, said Brobst. The name originally was written with P, Propst, meaning provost.
History. Particular events, as they happen, count most in making history. Einzeleiten in der Geschichte sind die Hauptsache.
Silly Phrases.
Hering is frequently annoyed by such. As for example the German word, Leider, meaning alas, or unhappily. Another, frequently used, is: Eine Rolle Spielen, (to play a part, as in a drama). Also the word standpoint (Standpunkt) is objectionable to him when misapplied.
The First Homoeopath.
St. Paul was the first homoeopath; for in Acts, Chap. 14, verse 15, he says:We are homoeopatois,’ a Greek word signifying of like passions; in German aehnlich leidende, of like suffering.
Hering laughs and says that is something the old man (meaning Hahnemann) did not know.
Wine. Hahnemann. Carey. Hahnemann drank his wine in thimblefuls. A strong German wine. Henry Carey, Political Economist, did the same, and treated his guests in the same way.
June 20, 1869
An Adventure. The Inebriated College Trustee. A note came to Dr. Hering asking him to go to the station house, at 15th and Locust Streets, to see a Mr. Norton, one of the trustees of our College; that he had been picked up intoxicated on Chestnut Street the night before. We were amazed, but thought if it were Mr. Norton, the President of our College, we must have been ill and found unconscious. Hering did not feel like going, and no official person being available I volunteered to go.
It was not our President whom I found at the station-house, in a cell, where a man had been confined all night without anything to eat, but one of our talented trustees, a portrait- painter, who had been picked up by an officer and brought in the night before.
The painter’s story was the following: I was on my way out of town to paint a portrait and got in with some friends who persuaded me to go with them to Harmer’s Cornucopia, where I got tight, and in going up Chestnut Street, I was arrested and brought here. I was robbed of the last two dollars I had in my pocket, also of my spectacles, from which only the case left me and I have had nothing to eat since yesterday.
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,