Our reverses, he said, are as valuable to us as our gains
An Aspirant for a Diploma. A strange thing happened to Dr. Hering this morning in his office hours. A young woman, recommended by Dr. Farrington, came and wished to know if she might attend the summer course of lectures at the college. Dr.A. from New York State had sent her to F., who sent her to Hering. She was in poor health, had suffered all through the winter with cough and spiting of blood, for which she had taken Phosphorus; she also had a continuous coryza, still she desired a diploma. Dr.Hering was surprised, because at that time women were not co-eds, as now, but he referred her to the Registrar.
In spite of being a woman in precarious health, probably a consumptive, she still wishes to be a homoeopathic physician; Her courage, if not her prudence, is to be admired.
A Meeting of the Country Society. Gymnocladus.
I escorted Father Hering to a meeting of the Country Society this evening. Arm in arm we went. He was more jolly than I had yet seen him. Nothing of great importance was transacted at the meeting. Dr. Guernsey arose and said a few words in favor of the much discussed Fair, thereby showing courage in the presence of opponents.
When I had brought back Dr. Hering, we took seats in the back office where he talked to me for an hour before retiring. He told me of a proving he had made of the pulp of a bean from a tree in Washington Square, the Gymnocladus canadensis. In Kentucky the bean is used in the making of a substitute for coffee. Hering, too, tried the preparation, in company with some friends, but did not admire the beverage. The proving caused some fine symptoms, but no patient so far has been found with symptoms to correspond. They have some similarity to those of Belladonna. The pulp is used for a fly poison.
The Musca domestica is called Fliege in Northern Germany and Muecke in Southern Germany. In the North the mosquito is called Muecke. The Pennsylvania Germans owe a large part of their dialect to South Germany. Plants. Provings. Williamson. Jeanes. Bute.
In reference to provings to be made from plants, Williamson favors a distinction to be made between provings from the plant itself and those made from its active principle. They should be thrown together. Our Dr. Jeans did a great deal of proving. Likewise Bute, who introduced Daphne indica and Mezereum. Jeans made provings of the body-louse the lady apple, the Dolichos pruriens and Kino gummi.
Jeanes was satisfied to get one good symptom from a proving, on which he could prescribe. Guernsey admits that he got his idea of practising by the keynote system, from Jeanes.
We should always have three characteristic symptoms to a remedy before we prescribe it. There are to be considered: 1. Time. 2. Space. 3. Locality. The third refers to right and left side, front and back, up and down, etc. The first belongs to modality. Jeanes had a medicine for almost every spot on the body He classified headaches under the various regions assigned by phrenology.
Clinical Cases. Dr. Raue began his studies by reading all the cases reported in Medical Journals, by which he soon acquired knowledge useful in prescribing.
College Journal Clinical Cases. Dr. Hering still thinks Martin, co-editor of the college Journal, should submit copy of clinical matter to him before going to press. The June number is filled with cases which Hering has not had an opportunity to approve. Hering has in mind writing a book for young practitioners, but says he must first have a collection of a thousand cases for analysis.
Remedies-Their Origin. Arum Triphyllum. Hamamelis. I got the Arum triphyllum (Jack-in-the-Pulpit) from an up- country Pennsylvania German who had it from an old woman. It became a valuable remedy for scarlet fever in its worst form. I was called to see three children located in a basement on Cherry Street. The eldest child was in the last stage of the sickness, evidently dying. The second was in the second stage and very sick. The third had just begun to sicken. I thought of the Pennsylvania Germans remedy, the Arum triphyllum, which I administered to each of the three children, in the sixth dilution. All three recovered.
The chief indications for the remedy are soreness of the mouth, cracked lips and salivation. I tried the remedy again soon after; this time getting an aggravation, probably due to the use of a low potency; higher ones were made use of later.
Hamamelis (witch hazel) was suggested to me by a consumptive at the point of death, who controlled his hemorrhages with a quack medicine, which he himself had introduced, and which made him rich, but which he kept a secret. A substance which can stop hemorrhages from a lung almost gone, must be a good remedy, I thought. The consumptive had a daughter who impressed me. She revealed to me the formula.
Her father had planted acres with the witch hazel, had built a distillery by which to extract the sap from the bush during the month of February, when it is strongest, just before the flowering season, when all plants are strongest in sap. If it had not been for the daughter, I would not have had any time for a man who discovered a healing remedy and guarded its secret for material gain. The Hering Family. Hering has one brother, Karl and a sister living. One brother, Julius, died young. He says he must look up the living ones, if he again goes to Europe. If respectable, he says, he will recognize them. If not, he wont concern himself about them. His brother, Karl, is a renowned musician, whom Mendelssohn pronounced the greatest contrapuntist in Germany. The Young Woman Who Desires a Diploma.
This would-be doctress spoke to Dr. Farrington and myself at the College this morning. She is desperate. She says she will get a degree if she has to go to France, or Germany for it. She says she has been thrice cured by homoeopathy.
May 17, 1869. Signatura. Cranberries. Cranberry poultice, recommended for erysipelas, comes under the head of signatura, a very ancient doctrine, which has much to recommend it on the grounds of Similia.
The Lizard With the Broken Tail. Natures Mistake. A lizard which had broken its tail and afterwards, for want of surgical aid grew two tails, was to sent to a museum in Germany. It was intended to represent the old school notion of a Vis medicatrix naturae. A satire on Schiller’s expression, Suesse heilige Natur, fuehre mich auf deiner spur’ (Sweet and holy nature, lead me in thy ways). The specimen did not reach the museum, at least I did not find it there. Nature needs both wisdom and art to guide it.
Governor Pollock and the Poor Man. A German by the name of Taxis, a simple hearted, honest man, lost his position as janitor at the United States Mint, when Governor Pollock became director of that institution. A son of Taxis, employed in the Union Bank, wrote a filial letter to Dr. Hering in behalf of his father, asking him to use his influence to get his father restored to his position, as on their combined salaries depended the sustenance of the family.
Unthinkingly and ill-advisedly I undertook to call on the newly elected Governor at his church, where he instructed a Bible Class, early on a Sunday morning. Pollock said: I am sorry that you came on such a mission on a Sunday; I cannot break the Sabbath
Next day I visited the Governor at his office, with a letter signed by Dr. Hering. The letter set forth, in flattering terms, the philanthropy, as well as the politics of the Governor, but it failed to move his honor, who said that he was overwhelmed with applications, three hundred of them being from women for whom he had only ten vacancies, Widows, he said come here with their children, weep, and moan, and sigh, enough to take the heart out of a man.
A politician, I thought, with a heart; a rara avis He further said that he was not in favor of men appointed under Johnson’s administration, all of whom he had discharged and that he intended to appoint his own men. He thought there had been too many superfluous appointments. All of which boded ill for reinstatement of poor Taxis, and I went away feeling that my visit had proved a failure. Next day the son came to Dr. Hering with a twenty dollar bill, intended as a present for the Governor, but was told that probably a man as pious as the Governor would reject such a gift. I had my first lesson in politics.
First Patient. Today, when Dr. Hering was standing in the doorway of the college, a lady passed. He said: That lady was my first patient when I came to Philadelphia.
Betts. This afternoon we had a visit from Dr. Betts, one of the younger men graduated from the College, who has just returned from Europe, where he spent some time in travel and some in making the acquaintance of homoeopathic physicians abroad. Dr. Betts, who could not speak the language a year ago, now speaks good German. He brought the news that Fleischmann, a homoeopath in Vienna, had died; that Eidherr is ill with lung-disease, and that Haussman is not very old.
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,