I hesitated a moment, then gave him the following advice: Go to the Schuylkill River when again you feel the attack coming on. Undress. Get some of your friends to tie a rope under your shoulders so that they can suspend you in the water up to your mouth. Jump into the river and force yourself to stay there during the chill. When the fever, which follows the chill, comes on remain there until the sweat appears, then leave the water.
My directions were followed to the letter. The patient soon became blue in the face; his friends thought he would die, but he motioned to them that he wished to stay in the water. Soon the fever took hold of him and the poor fellow became so weak that he could scarcely utter a word. His friends again motioned to pull him out, but he decided to stand the ordeal. He had been in the water two hours when the sweat came on. He now consented to be taken from the river and his friends pulled him to the shore, wrapped him into warm blankets and took him home. From that day he had no return of chills or fever, was married to the girl of his choice, and supposedly lived happily ever after.
If again I should be moved to advise such heroic treatment I would urge the patient to get out of the bath as soon as the fever came on.
The remedy, in good faith, is one of kill or cure Case of the Cuban.
A young Cuban was brought to Philadelphia for treatment. I was called in consultation with an allopathic physician who had the case in hand. I found a young man, with black eyes, mere skeleton filled with air, unable to swallow a morsel of food without vomiting it up directly after. He cursed at doctors in general and swore that he would take neither homoeopathic nor any other kind of medicine.
I sent to the nearest shop for some plain cream, of which I ordered a teaspoonful to be taken, with little sugar every half hour. The patient took it. Next day he said he had not vomited once. I then increased the quantity of cream to dessert spoonful doses, every hours. On the following day he complained of severe pain in the stomach. I felt a large lump there size of a fist. This his physician had pronounced to be a cancer. It was none.
I gave him two globules of Hyoscyamus on the tongue. He had no more pain after this. I now ordered a table spoonful of beef- tea to be taken on the one-half hour, and the same quantity of arrowroot on the next half-hour, turn about. The young man kept on gaining weight steadily and in a short time he returned to his island a well man.
When he received my bill, in the amount of one hundred dollars, he paid it promptly, telling me that I was the most sensible doctor he had ever met, and at the same time the most stupid, because he had expected to pay me no less than a thousand.
The patient recommended a great many others to me, from Cuba. Homoeopathy flourished there until it was spoiled by another physician, a colleague.
Unpaid Advice.
Latter, while still living on Walnut Street, there came to my office, a father and son. The son was in almost the same condition as the case just described. The father asked me what he should do. I told him to give his son small quantities of food, and often. When I had turned my back the two slipped out from my office without paying a fee. I subsequently learned that the father said: Anybody could have given him the same advice’ And yet it cured his boy There is much truth in small suggestions like these, often overlooked, or disregarded by reason of their apparent insignificance. Imagination.
This plays a strong part in the getting well, or being made worse, with many sick people. We people who yet imagine themselves to be ill should be punished. Ungrateful Patients.
I was asked the other day whether it was not very provoking, as well as discouraging, to meet with ungrateful patients. Ingratitude we meet with every day, said I. Our Lord and Master was covered with it. Surely God has more cause to complain of ingratitude than have I More of the same Medicine.
A patient, one morning, sent his man to get some more of the same medicine, but to get it from the young doctor; who had probably prescribed it on the advice of the older one. Charity.
One morning a man was waiting in the reception room. When I came in he asked that both doors be closed. He then, told me that his name was B………, a young doctor from Boston, on his way to West Chester, where he had an uncle. He said he was without a penny in his pockets, so asked me to lend him sixty cents, to go by the noon train. I gave him seventy-five cents, which he promised to return on the following day. I never saw him again. He had said that he had expected his uncle to meet him at the American House. He smelled of rum and worse shabby clothes. Dr. Hering is frequently approached by mendicants: by some honestly, mostly otherwise. I am supposed to stand between him and these to shield him from unworthy applicants, but he is often imposed upon in one way or another, in spite of my efforts. Natural History. The Ichneumon Fly.
The Icheumon Fly lays its eggs into the body of a live caterpillar. After the caterpillar is converted into a chrysalis there emerges from it, not a butterfly but the Ichneumon Fly.
April 23, 1869. Aloes.
I went to a druggist in Philadelphia by the name of Morris to buy some Aloes. He showed me two kinds. I told him that both of them were adulterations. He sent his boy out to all the drug stores in town for more samples. An immense heap of Aloes was collected, all of them bogus. The druggist was chagrined. He sent to New York for more samples. I came to examine this large assortment but did not find a single genuine specimen among them. At last I noticed that the druggist held back a small package, carefully wrapped in paper, which he did not seem willing to show me. I asked to see it.
He handed it over, smiled as I said: This is genuine aloes. Where did you get it?’ He confessed that he had stolen it from a collection in the Academy of Pharmacy, of which he was a trustee. The sample had been brought into the country by an expedition that had sailed around the world and had received the specimen from the Sultan of Muscat, who grew the plant from which the substance is derived. When you break a piece of Aloes the fracture must show a purplish golden tint, almost transparent. The adulterated specimens were boiled in certain oils to such a degree that they made the paper, in which they came, greasy.
Aloes has its sphere of action in the pelvis. There is great congestion there, with a feeling of fullness as if everything was tending there; hemorrhoidal tenesmus. Inflammation.
Inflammation is the result of overaction of the serous membranes. If these become overactive the natural vacuum which exists in the serous sacs is increased and a congestion of blood to the part results. Vertigo is due to diminished action of the serous membranes of the brain, causing diminution of blood there. Overaction of the serous membranes of the heart produces violent palpitation and other heart symptoms. When the pendulum swings back we have the opposite symptoms; depressed heart-action, etc. They wish to prove this theory by experiments. This cannot be done. Anecdote. Disobliging Help.
Whenever others do not wish to do a thing for me I always go and do it myself. At one time a heavy snow fell. It snowed as if there were huge bags of feathers in the clouds which were ripped open and emptied of their contents upon the earth beneath. The family wash hung on the line, on the stable roof. The coachman had been asked to take it down. He refused. I pulled on a pair of heavy boots said: Hahnemann geh du voran, du hast die grossen Stiefel an. (Hahnemann, you take the lead, the biggest boots are on your feet) and plunged to the shoulders into the snow.
After me rushed the whole pack of servants; with them one of the young ladies who had some valuable clothes among the lot, and who was most eager to press forward, following close at my heels. At last, after great exertion, we reached the stable. Having first lifted the heavy trap-door, laden with snow, I made my way to the roof where I cut down the line upon which the clothes were suspended, brought it down to the ground where those below took them off. When we got back to the house everybody exclaimed: Oh, but this is outrageous Just think of the doctor The coachman had hidden angrily in some corner.
A man who wished to have some letters taken to the Post Office, on finding that his errand boy was busy, asked his coachman to carry the letters. The coachman replied: It is not my business Ah, yes said the man, I forgot. Excuse me. You may hitch the horses and bring the carriage around to the door. The coachman opened his eyes wide in surprise when the boy-of-all- work stepped into the carriage, letters in hand and asked to be driven to the Post Office in style, there to deposit the letters.
Often in life the doctor had to take the burden upon his shoulders, without thinking it too hard to bear if thereby he could serve the cause. Martin. Co-Editor of Journal.
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,