When making the first boxes for the Domestic Physician I thought it best to use numbers, in place of names, for the medicines. This was done because I thought, for instance, the name of Ipecac. might suggest vomiting, and that of Ferrum, weakness. The medicines at first were put up in quills, for we had neither vials nor corks. Lingen’s advice was to put up the medicines myself, and sell them to make money. I Said: Sooner than do that, I wish that the whole world might go to nothing
Jenichen. Jenichen was a powerful man, who could break a horseshoe with his hand, like a cracker. He once came to a blacksmith together with some other young noblemen and asked him if he could make a good horseshoe. The answer was Yes.’ When the shoe was made Jenichen took it and broke it with his hands. You must be a devil,’ said the blacksmith; no human being could do such a thing.’ Jenichen laughed, paid for the shoe and left. He could roll a silver fork, or plate, into a scroll.
Jenichen was in love. When, after a long absence from his sweetheart, he rode to her home, to a village at some distance, where the people he met looked serious, he was informed that his bride to be had died on the previous night from scarlet fever. He turned his horse’s head and rode away. He never married. To me he wrote, You could never have loved your wife, or you never would have married again.’
Jenichen now gave his love to homoeopathy, which he said would have saved his bride, and some of it to horses. One time when he wished to give Veratrum to a sick horse, he found the vial empty. Thinking that some of the remedy must still cling to the glass, and the cork, he put some globules into the vial and gave those to the sick animal. Potentization. My Multiplication Scale.
I made triturations 1 to 10, in a much quicker way. I made 1 to 100, 1 to 1000, to see what the difference might be. I had provers make provings of the billionth and the decillionth, in three different ways. I found, by the aid of the microscope, that any medicine could be triturated in fifteen minutes. To begin a proving I always swallowed first the rinsings from a mortar, after making a trituration. A prover may have a return of symptoms after a year. Observe Rhus poisoning. We again arrive in the same position to the planets. He, Jenichen, said he washed a bottle then allowed it to evaporate; he then added alcohol to the drug and shook. He did not count it a shake unless he heard a ring.
Pehrson who knew him, wrote books in Latin, and thought himself inspired. He prayed for his patients and thought the Lord would show him the remedy. He called everything an inflammation. He was cracked. Fevers.
While practicing in Surinam I was never left more than five days without a case of putrid fever, and never lost a case unless my orders were disobeyed.
Practice. We should be governed by symptoms; not by a single one either. Three highly characteristic ones are necessary-like a chair which will stand firmly on three legs. Voting.
I think every one who has the right to vote should do so from a sense of duty.
Paracelsus. The saying Mundus vult decipe (the world wishes to be deceived) has, for years, been attributed to Paracelsus. He said: Apothecaries think that wisdom comes flying in to them through the window,’ and of Jews he said that they claim knowledge of great secrets from their Talmud and Cabala, also that since the world asks to be deceived, it is just as well that the deceiving be down by both Jews and Christians.
Nov.9, 1870. Studio. Let some one turn a somersault Here is what I call a cure Gosewisch’s case of pterygium. Old woman and nettles The Urtica urens contains formicic acid.
Aegidi, Aegidi successfully prescribed Angustura for my daughter Hildegard’s necrosed foot. At the same time that it was helping her, Aegidi’s life was saved by my Benzoic acid I had refused my consent to an amputation of my child’s foot just as I had refused the removal of my infected hand, in early life. Aegidi is opposed to Boenninghausen. B. was a layman; Aegidi, a thoroughly educated physician. So it was between Lippe and myself. Wesselhoeft. The old doctor was a man of high ideals. If he is not in the very first heaven I would not care to go there. Albeit he could say some awful swear words
Frederick Hahnemann. Hering says : If you can get me the books of Frederick Hahnemann when you go to Edinburgh, I will give a feast. Frederick was very talented, but a hunchback and a freak. Went about in oriental costume, allowed his beard that he had lived for a time in Scotland. At one time mention was made of a portrait bust of Hahnemann. Soon after it was declared to be the bust of Frederick, the son. He must have ended in some Western lead mines, in Missouri, where he had gone to treat patients in an epidemic of cholera. He was a misanthrope.
I wonder if one could learn something about him from places in Missouri? I had written something about the man for a journal signed Ostner which was flatly contradicted by Hartmann, who said that Frederick Hahnemann had disappeared while in Scotland. A hunchback seldom lives to the age of eighty; they die young. In Hahnemann’s last letter he wrote to me : My poor Frederick will become insane.’ This made me feel very sad. Plumbum. Hahnemann wrote, in a letter to Stapf, that he did not wish to have Plumbum proved. This fact made me decide to have it done. In spite of the unreasonable respect for Hahnemann with which I had been charged, I made the proving. Probably Hahnemann may have give it without result. Hartlaub then opened his Materia Medica with it. I did not send my proving to Stapf fearing that, from strong feelings of reverence, he might refuse to print it. Nenning’s wife kept a dress making establishment, in which many girls were employed, who were set to making provings of the Plumbum. Dec.2, 1870. Naturalist.
At the age of nine to ten I had found the caterpillar Sphynx Atropos on my father’s grapevine, which was the beginning of my studies in natural history. Later came the Lachesis, and finally Clotho, third of the three Fates, who are supposed to sway the lives of men; thus coming into my life in reverse order. Dec,4, 1870. Knorr.
There came the news that my once intimate friend, Professor Knorr, teacher of German, had mysteriously disappeared, two days ago. Knorr, who resided in a section of the city close to the river, where prowled suspicious characters, called the Schuylkill rangers, had left his house at twilight, to get an order for coal placed before the office closed. He was never seen again. He must have been assaulted and foully murdered. We had a falling out over some disparaging remarks the latter had made about German workers, which, for some time, kept us apart. If I should meet my friend now, or at some future time on the street, I would embrace him and say all is forgotten.
The disappearance of Professor Knorr has remained one of the many unsolved mysteries in the annals of crime.
Dec.26, 1872 After the interval, covered by my absence abroad, these notes were resumed, and added to, from time to time, until Hering’s death, in July of 1880.
Surinam. Servants. I kept a footboy who always slept in front of my door at night, a female slave who had nothing to do but attend to the laundry, a boy who had to cut grass for the horse, another to take care of the animal, and a third to hitch him to the carriage. Dec.30, 1872. Fatherland. With every breath I take I cherish the memory of my fatherland. Never have I forgotten it, for a moment. No one knows what he loses when he leaves the land of his birth, a stranger in a strange land I bore it all for the sake of homoeopathy. This, now, is the country of my children. Jan.6, 1873. Practice. Death of a valued patient. Mrs. Babcock.
It is so terrible for me to stand and look on where I cannot help, particularly where it concerns a person for whom I have entertained feelings of affection and respect. Records.
Gideon Leeds was the name of a patient who on a certain date, long past, had hemorrhages, which returned later, at a time when Dr. Hering was absent in Europe. His assistant, Dr. Husmann, consulted the books and found there recorded Conium. The remedy was again prescribed, successfully. A similar instance happened to me when a Mr. Daniel Smith sent a request for a remedy he had received fourteen years previously. The name of this medicine was Clematis, which again helped as before. So much for accurate book keeping and preserving records indefinitely. Wens. The case of Mrs. Benton.
An old lady patient had wens on her head. She had a son, a politician, who may have been in the senate. One time she had a fall and broke a leg. McClellan, a prominent surgeon in Philadelphia, was called to attend her. The doctor happened to see the wens and said: They must be cut out.’ The patient said: My doctor does not approve of an operation.’ Who is your doctor?’ Dr. Hering,’ she said. Ha Ha These homoeopaths, what do they know?’ The surgeon removed the wens. Some time after, the patient developed dropsy, sent for me and said: Doctor, do you remember my wens? I know I shall die It happened, some time later, that I was summoned to attend the postmortem. The allopathic doctors who officiated found nothing pathologic in any of the many cavities that were opened and were ready to desist from further examination, when I said to them; Have you looked at the kidneys?’ If a bomb had fallen in their midst they could not have been worse scared. They removed the kidneys and there were the wens, in the form of ulcers, which had brought about the dropsy and which had caused the patients death. Again the damned Dutch’ had scored, and the allopaths had to take the blame Jan. 11, 1873. The Missing Muffler. Today, when I came downstairs to get into my carriage I put on my hat but could not find my woolen scarf. It was cold out doors. I knew that I had not left it in the carriage, the day before. I adjusted my glasses, looked down, and there, under my feet, like a small heap of misery lay the missing scarf The children have gone to see Dum Dum (Tom Thumb).
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,