Emerson has said that “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” Homoeopathy is, therefore, the lengthened shadow of the great and benevolent personality of Samuel Hahnemann; and we of the present day are basking in its cooling shadow, amid the torrid noon-day of medical misunderstandings.
I should like to picture again, at this hour, one of those last Fest-Jubilees–one of those unforgettable assemblies when the zealous admirers of Hahnemann gathered, as we are gathered here tonight, to do honor to one whose name must some day be written in the Valhalla of the Great. At those assemblies gathered his followers from all the nations of the earth. Here we gather, for the most part of but one blood. It is probable that nowhere at the present day are there gathered so many diversified nationalities as at the meetings of the International Homoeopathic League, which, the breech of past hostilities fortunately having been healed, meets the coming year at Paris, where the great Commander himself celebrated so many fetes, so many victories.
This year, nineteen hundred and twenty-six, is the one hundred and fiftieth of the birth of American Independence, and the eighty-second annual assembly of the American Institute of Homoeopathy. As we gather at the Cradle of Liberty in Philadelphia as a national body, and golden summer decks the earth with perfumed fragrance, let us weave our. variegated garlands of hemlock, purple fox-glove and glowing nightshade in all humility and reverence, and crown anew as of old the noble brow of Samuel Hahnemann.
I would that we had a modern David to mould again the great Hahnemanns head. In lieu of the master sculptor, I exhibit here a copy of the famous modelers medallion of Hahnemann, presented to me by my esteemed friend, Dr. Pierre Schmidt, of Geneva, Switzerland. And finally, in lieu of the famous lines of Rummel. I give you this humble tribute to the Father of Homoeopathy:
SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
Meissen, April 10, 1755. Paris, July 2, 1843.
thou who mighty, guardst the mystic scroll,
Where mortal fate upon thy heaving breast.
Each thought, each word, in blazing prints impressed;
Didst thou for once let other hand unroll?
Didst freedom give to one to change the whole,
The message write that ancient wrongs redressed,
Wherein the past its crimes and sin confessed,
Didst thou, Great One, bow down to this great soul?.
For to this son of humble parentage.
Was given grace to blot out every line,
Age-old tradition, folly of his age,.
New truths instil, a law of cure divine.
S. Christian Hahnemann, the Seer, the Sage,
About thy head the laurel we entwine.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.