The Life of Hering

By Calvin B. Knerr, M.D.

Excerpts by Premananda Childs

There are certain books in your library that you hold special. The older, the dearer, has always been my motto. The history books of King and Bradford, and recently, our departed friend, Julian Winston, impress us with the scope of homeopathy, and along with the journals, are our history. As homeopaths we are familiar with the life of Hahnemann, but our knowledge of Constantine Hering may often be limited to his proving of Lachesis and the picture of him on his couch where he studied and slept in his library. Although Hering and Hahnemann never met, the two remained very close through correspondence, and the torch was undoubtedly passed on to Hering, who in turn spread Hahnemann’s “new medicine” most dynamically. Calvin Knerr is most known for completing the ten volumes of “The Guiding Symptoms”. Hering died while literally working on the third volume, and Knerr, his son in law, was left with the responsibility to finish the work. No homeopathic library should be without these editions. Yet there is another book that Knerr published late in his life, that has a special niche on my bookshelf; the “Life of Hering”.

Knerr graduated from Hahnemann Medical College , in Philadelphia, in 1869, and soon after moved in with Hering’s family to be the doctor’s assistant. In 1873, Dr. Knerr was married to Hering’s daughter, Melitta. No one was more qualified than Knerr to keep a diary of life in the Hering household. Reading the biography’s daily accounts, and Hering’s stories about his life, prompted me to present excerpts from those days with Hering, and extract enough to give the flavor of this great character and the life that revolved around him. The excerpts are chronological, and are only a glimpse of this great biography.

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In the evening, Dr. Farrington present, Hering related the history of his early student days in Leipzig, when he was poor, and struggling to maintain a living.

“On account of leaving the ranks of the allopaths, in which school I had graduated at the University of Wuerzburg, and joining the homeopaths, I was in sore straights. I occupied a room but poorly furnished, for which I paid twenty-five cents per week; a cold place, where, without fuel, I almost froze on bitter cold days. I was invited to meals at a students’ free eating house ( a kind of soup house), but only at such times when other boarders had skipped their meals because they did not think them good enough. Here the bread was good, whatever might be said of the rest of the food. Often I took home with me scraps of rye bread, which, stale and dry, I soaked in weak broth, or ate them hard as they were, which made my gums bleed, but in this way I thought I obtained some organic matter for my system! One day a student friend told me of a woman who kept a boarding house, a believer in homeopathy and in need of treatment.

“My friend coaxed me to go with him to see the woman, who needed Ignatia; she invited me to stay to supper. The kind woman soon heard of my condition. She provided me with some spare pieces of wood for a fire and some milk. One day, when she came to my room, she noticed some of the dry bread heaped up on my desk, and wished to know what I intended to do with it, I told her I was saving it for sustenance. She asked me if I had a mind to exchange some of it for milk; that she had some cows and pigs for whom stale bread was very good food. She took some of the hardest pieces. Later in exchange for treatment, she boarded me until better times came.”

(From History of Homeopathy, King, vol.1, p. 140)

Hering received his degree of doctor of medicine, surgery and obstetrics, March 22, 1826. His medical examination was severe, doubtly so because of his known devotion to homoeopathy. . . .

Baumgartner, the founder of a publishing house, wanted a book written against homoeopathy, for after Hahnemann was obliged to leave Leipzig to escape persecution, it was thought that homoeopathy would die out; but as this death seemed too slow this book was intended to hasten the end. Dr. Robbie (Hering’s preceptor in surgery) was asked to write the book, but declined and recommended his assistant (luckily for us!).

Conversion to Homeopathy (Knerr, p.102)

“When a student, I was writing a book against homeopathy. My first question had been: What is the meaning of similar? A painter has painted a portrait. Someone looks at it and says: ‘How great the resemblance!’ Another person says:‘It is not at all like him!’ Now then, what can it mean for one thing to be similar to another? I then began to study the Materia medica. Under every remedy I found vertigo; in German “Schwindel.” I almost came to the conclusion that the whole business was nothing but a swindle!

“I explored further and it seemed to me as if the devil was at the bottom of the whole thing by the way it all came out. Everything agreeing.

“I am very glad that my book was never printed. My old friend, the apothecary, who was happy when I began to write against homeopathy, was always ready to secure for me anything I might need to carry on the work. One day I came to ask him for a good tincture of Peruvian bark, unadulterated. This was a drug in common use, at the time, against malarial fevers that were prevalent. I saw a change come over the face of the druggist, who sensed my purpose. He knew that this drug had paved the way for Hahnemann to make his discovery. ‘That my friend, is very dangerous’, remarked the druggist. ‘Have no fear,’ said I. ‘I have studied the mathematics and am able to tell the truth from what is not true.’

“In a fortnight I was forbidden my house and lost my stipend. I came near starving. No one gave me any help. My friends avoided me. Some of them said: ‘Hering is going crazy!’ Another, a friend, offered to play sick so that he might have an excuse for paying me a fee for attending him.

“I was mad to discover the boundaries between the true and false in homeopathy. I was persuaded to call upon a certain boarding-house mistress who had said she wished to try homeopathic treatment. I called. She said,‘I have no time at the moment. Sit down and eat.’ I ate like a wood- chopper. The woman said: ‘Come again tomorrow at one, when I will have time.’ One o’clock was meal time. Again I was asked to sit down at the table and satisfy my hunger.

“I began to barter medical treatment for food, and once more regained my strength, which I devoted to further study of Hahnemann’s books. . . .

“My enthusiasm grew. I became a fanatic. I went about the country, visited Inns, where I got up on tables and benches to harangue whoever might be present to listen to my enthusiastic speeches on homeopathy. I told the people they were in the hands of cut-throats and murderers. I made many cures. Success came everywhere. I almost thought I could raise the dead.”

The Infected Hand (Hering entitled: ‘Homeopathy is Dead!’): written a year later.

“I had left Leipzig. After another year had passed, homeopathy was still living, although I myself had nearly died, from an infected hand, received when making a dissection; an accident that has carried off many a young physician by a horrible death. The dissection was made on the exhumed body of a suicide, a job side-stepped by others, and over which I lingered a bit too long, while dabbling among the entrails with a partly healed cut on the forefinger of the right hand, thinly covered by a scab.

“After several days my finger began to show signs of infection. I was given the opportunity to observe, on myself, that malady against which leeches, calomel and hellstone (nitrate of silver) had proved powerless in allopathic hands. I refused amputation, because with a crippled hand I would have had little show of becoming an obstetrician or a surgeon. I preferred death to this. I was, at the time, still deeply sunk in that superstitious belief that external diseases could not be reached by internal remedies, least of all when given in small doses.

“I was saved by one of Hahnemann’s earliest students (a good friend, Dr. Kummer) who persuaded me to try Arsenic, in ridiculously small doses. When after taking a few doses of the remedy on my tongue, a sense of relief from the horrible affliction began to pervade my body, the last abstruction that had made me blind to the rising sun of the new healing art was vanishing before my eyes.

“I still have the finger; it is the same with which I write this, and more than all I have devoted my entire hand, body and soul, to the cause which Hahnemann gave to suffering humanity. His teachings had not only restored my bodily health but gave me a new purpose in life.

And it was to me they told: “Homeopathy is dead!”

After graduating, Hering taught natural science and mathematics in Dresden. On recommendation by the institute to the King of Saxony, he was sent to Surinam, South America, on a botanical and zoological expedition. He traveled with an old friend, Christopher Weigel, a botanist. Hering described his trip as it started by coach to Amsterdam.

“A Sea Voyage and Letters from the Tropics” 1827, while Hering awaited to sail from Amsterdam he described the carriage ride from Saxony. (p. 155)

“It is well, when parting, the gray threads in the fabric of care are shot through with the red of joyful anticipation, as was the case with us who were leaving. . . .

“We started on our journey. We occupied first places in one of the extra coaches. There was a scramble among the passengers. Weigel and I, because armed as we were, to the teeth, with four guns, numbering five barrels, and two swords, were accounted unsafe, and no one was willing to share our conveyance, to which we did not object in the least. For a while we harbored a Prussian officer, a major, who had missed the coach ahead in the scramble for seats. He later gave a favorable report of us to the rest of the passengers.

“The caravan reminded me of a centipede, with a very rapid crawl. It had about fifty horse’s feet with which to cover the road. Its segmented body was equipped in front with a yellow head and chest, and whips for antennae. Its entrails, with ramifications, were represented by twenty four or five passengers inside the coaches. As parasites, on its sides, rode five outriders on horseback; that these were suckers was shown at every stop. In all the centipede numbered one hundred and ten legs, ten more than belong to the many jointed myriapod, commonly named “hundred legger”.

(Hering’s imagination was always in Nature) Late into the night they arrived in Naumberg, home of Stapf.

“Stapf, a mainstay of our school of medicine, who was expecting me, according to appointment, was waiting. Although in correspondence with him for a long time we had never met, and the time seemed all too short for this meeting, in the brief time allowed for the stopover. We had expected to arrive at midnight, but it was two o’clock when I alighted to look for my friend. My principal object in meeting Stapf was to obtain certain medicines which I needed to complete my outfit, and also to get his counsel about certain things to be done for our cause. Furthermore there were medicines to reach me at the local post office, and possibly a letter. Anxiety gripped me; for rather than to be without my Hahnemannian medicines I would go without coat and pants. Nothing at the post office! Furiously I demanded to see the postmaster, who was asleep. ‘What is the matter? Why the hurry? Here is the package from Dr. Stapf for a traveler who is to come through. This must be the party,’ he said pointing his finger at me. He had observed me with my cap off, my mantle over my ears under it gun and hunting knife, a terrifying object. At this moment a man slightly stooped, simply dressed, of scholarly appearance, with a box under his arm, stepped forward saying: ‘Surely you must be Dr. Hering?’ ‘That I am; and you, Dr. Stapf?’ ‘My dear friend,’ said he, ‘What a solemn first meeting with so soon a parting. What an enormous undertaking, this journey, what gain, very great gain, and what danger in a thousand ways! But come; come quickly.’

“As we walked through the dark streets, our voices made us acquainted, our faces being revealed but in shadowy outlines. At his home my friend provided me with the medicines I had asked for in my letter, and several more, all genuine and of the best preparations, carefully packed for the long journey. All I had to give in return was promises, thanks and some observations for his advice. Doubtful things were cleared up. Uncertain matters corroborated.

“With all the worries and anxieties the prospect of leaving home had caused me, my heart was glad by meeting face to face a great man like Stapf, whom I had thus far only been able to admire from a distance. . . .It was granted me, at the last moment before leaving, to receive greeting from another, from Hahnemann himself, who stands, and ever will stand high above all of us. . . .

The words were: ‘Hahnemann sends you his heartfelt greeting; gives you his blessing and wishes you God speed. ’Twice he told me; a third time I would have embraced him, but the time had come to enter the stagecoach. It seemed to me that the dark night had suddenly become illumined by this message, received through my friend Stapf. It was like a benediction upon my head, and my feet seemed to touch consecrated ground.”

Enroute down the Rhine

“Our ship continued on its journey down the green royal Rhine until, on the following day, we spied the blue Seven Hill Mountains. I felt sad as I said farewell to the blue hills so dear to me from my childhood; dear as if they had been people. It was the hills, more than ought else, that enriched my youthful happy days. It was there I gathered my specimens, rested and dreamed the dreams that were to brighten my future years.”

As a boy Hering collected insects, plants and stones in that countryside. He made long excursions to the neighboring hills and valleys and returned laden with specimens. He would stop at an inn to arrange them. In those inns he learned the plain simple language, including curse words he hadn’t heard at home!

In Surinam, Hering was commissioned to collect for the museum of the King of Saxony. Hering lived there for six years, where he documented an “enormous wealth of plants , new varieties, easily pressed; the equally great abundance of rare insects . . . bird-spiders (aranea avicularia). . . to be caught by the hundred . . . flying insects too . . .”

While researching as a naturalist, Hering found facts illustrating the truth of Homeopathy, and gave an account of them in a German homeopathic journal (Stapf’s Archive). This offended the physician of the King of Saxony, who sent a letter saying he should stick to his botanical duties, and Hering, believing that he shouldn’t be controlled in the “service of scientific truth”, resigned his commission. In a brief time he found himself busy with patients, supported by the Moravian missionary community, and the locals. (Knerr, p. 213)

In 1830 Hering, through the friendship of Dr. George Butte, a Moravian missionary from Pennsylvania, doing missionary work in Surinam and studying homeopathy under Hering, followed Butte’s suggestion to send his collection to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia; bringing the rest of the biological and botanical collection, including a male and female Lachesis mutus when he moved to Philadelphia in 1833. The male was the venom donor and can be seen today; the bullet hole in the head from Hering’s pistol.

In the tropics, Hering busied in practicing homeopathy, treated lepers, studied the habits of the indigenous tribes, and traveled deep into the trackless forest. Riding up a river he told some hair-raising stories about hostile tribes attacking the boat, while he fired back as his oarsmen reloaded his gun as fast as they could. Another adventure while trying to catch a stingray, “the size of a barn door,” that, after trying to knock it unconscious with a sledge hammer, swam away entangled in lines that were wrapped around the feet of his helpers, pulling them in and almost drowning the lot!

It was the Arrowackian Indians who found the surukuku snake and brought it to Hering and his wife, who were camped up the Amazon River. Contrary to the story given by King and Clarke in his Dictionary, the snake, rather than sliding out of a basket while he held the head with a forked stick, Hering’s own account was that the snake had been run over by a cart at the edge of town, and when brought to him seemingly dead, the doctor noticed that he was still alive, and was able to force venom out of him.

Surinam. At Parting (p. 127)

“It was very hard for me to make up my mind to leave Surinam to come North. The following incident determined my decision. I had at one time met a German farmer who complained that his grapevines were not producing as they should. On questioning him why he felt so, he answered, ‘Because they will not blossom.’ ‘Why won’t they blossom?’ ‘Because the wine must have a winter.’ The wine must have a winter, I thought, and said to myself: ‘And so must you after living six years in a winter-less country.’”

Hering’s friends in Surinam - the Moravians who were missionaries and actually his ancestors - didn’t want him to leave. They had a ‘lottery machine’ they consulted for decisions (Halfed acorn shells with numbers, each shell numbered referring to a bible verse). The shell that came up (number 113) was: ‘Depart in peace, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over little, and shall be placed over much.’

William Wesselhoeft (p. 112)

Hering visited Dr. Wesselhoeft who had established a homeopathic practice. Together they started the Allentown Academy, the first, and possibly the best homeopathic college ever to have existed in America. When it began, in 1835, there were homeopaths practicing only in New York and Pennsylvania. By 1840, there were practitioners of the new medicine in sixteen states; the pupils of Allentown paving the way (King, History,vol.1, p.138). Twelve doctors graduated from the Allentown Academy and they became the pillars of American Homeopathy.

“William and I had but one quarrel. Oh! How mad we were! He said he owed me one hundred dollars. I said No! I owe you a hundred!

“Later I found my note of hand, but he said, ‘Forget it; and don’t say another word about it. It was paid.’ We used to sit up and talk late at night and then lie down on the floor and sleep until morning when we would drink a cup of coffee to the honor of Hahnemann.

“The old man (Wesselhoeft) is 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!”

Remarks of T.F. Allen about Hering (p. 217)

“To me he seems like a pioneer, one whose labors were to be built upon, one who prepared the way, hewed straight paths through the thickets and let light into dark places.”

“This feeling toward him had birth when one winter’s evening, twenty years ago, my revered preceptor, Dr. P.P.Wells, took me to a meeting at the house of Dr. Joslin, the elder, on the corner of University Pl. and Thirteenth St. How vividly I remember that evening, the calm, philosophical Joslin, the earnest Bayard, the positive Wells, the dogmatic Reisig, the keen-eyed Fincke and the enthusiastic life and center of all - Hering. I was the only young man present, fresh from the University, full of the teaching of the scholastics, full of the old-time prejudices of my father.

That group of men, that enthusiasm of Hering, the whole tone of thought was so different from that of the schools, that I was forced to believe in a vitalizing truth in Homeopathy. I ventured one little remark to Dr. Wells during the evening. Dr. Reisig was explaining some preparation of castile soap, which he considered a specific for burns. He was in the habit of applying it locally and of giving a potency internally, and Dr. Hering was combatting the local application. I asked Dr. Wells, almost in a whisper, ‘But does it cure?’ ‘Cure,’ thundered Reisig, ‘Of course it does!’ Hering looked at me and smiled, and said, ‘That was a good question’. My heart warmed toward him, and from that time we were friends, although he did not always approve of my way of doing things.”

Dr. Henry Guernsey (p. 231)

“His active and inquiring mind led him to continually search for, and gather up, all facts, particularly if new and of recent occurrence. A short time after I had located in Frankford, I was quite astonished to find Dr. Hering at my door, early one morning, inquiring for the residence of a person who had been stung by a bee, whose sufferings had been published in the daily paper. I at once took him, in my carriage, to the house of the sufferer, where he carefully noted down every face and symptom developed by the bee sting. This case proved of great value in making up the pathogenesis of Apis mellifica”. (Hering had left his busy practice and traveled 16 miles to locate this man). “When in quest of knowledge everything else had to give way; time, money, strength, sleep, and all else were sacrificed for the sake of science and homeopathy. ‘Anything and everything for our cause,’ he was often heard to say.

“Never did the slightest feeling of jealousy cross his mind. If any of his patients became restive and called on other physicians, his first inquiry upon missing them was, ‘Where have they gone? If to another homeopathic physician, then I am satisfied; there is no loss, but rather a gain to our cause.’ He was large-hearted and liberal, seeming to take in the whole profession as one man and considered himself as one of the least.”

Dr. Constantine Lippe (son of Adolph, named after Hering) (p. 242)

“It was my custom, on my visits to Philadelphia, to call on our friend and spend some very profitable hours with him. His uncompromising adherence to the strict principles of homeopathy helped me, in a great measure, to be certain that these principles were true, for in his long and successful practice, he, by adhering to those principles, could, and did, cure cases of diseases, entirely unmanageable by any other course of treatment.”

Dr. C. W. Boyce, at Hering’s house (p. 244)

“Every day at three o’clock found me at his house where I spent an hour with him. ln this time he did the talking, spoke of homeopathy and almost everything else. It finally came about, that almost every evening found me at Dr. Hering’s house . . .there I spent the winter, virtually in association with Drs. Hering, Lippe, Raue and Guernsey. These four were like schoolboys learning their lessons. Every night they met at Dr. Hering’s house and related the experiences of the day, and when any new result was reached they all noted it, and Dr. Hering recorded it is his manuscripts.

“For several years, after 1865, I visited Dr. Hering every summer and was always welcomed as warmly as before. In his home (a double house, Nos. 112 and 114 North Twelfth St.), on the first floor, were four rooms, besides kitchen and laundry, and one small room off the dining room. The two front rooms were his reception rooms. The north room was the ladies’ room and the south, his ordinary business room. The last was evenly divided across between the two windows by a couple of desks, behind one which the doctor stood, with pen in hand, ready to write down symptoms, or, when seated, to look up the remedy from his books; at the other desk sat his assistant. Many a times I have seen the space in front of the desks full of patients, even extending out all over the lower part of the house awaiting their turn for an audience. Behind his desk Dr. Hering stood passing upon one, then another until all were served, after which he would go out in his carriage to visit patients . . . .

“At one time when I called early in the morning, I found him in his study, on the second floor where his manuscripts are kept. It was here that he shut himself up and generally admitted no visitors except intimate ones on rare occasions. Here Raue, his intimate friend, came unfailingly for a short talk every morning. This room was lined with shelves, filled with books and manuscripts, which he needed in his work of book making, principally material for his Materia Medica. At one end of the room, the north side, there was a large iron safe for special manuscripts, and this was full. Dr. Carroll Dunham, prized friend and frequent visitor to this room, once said that his highest ambition would be gratified if he could but edit Dr. Hering’s manuscripts. It was in this room that on a couch placed beside his writing desk, he slept and where he began work long before others in the house were awake. Here he would sit half-dressed until Mrs. Hering came to help him into his clothes, to come down to meet his patients, which was about 10 o’clock.

“Dr. Hering’s mind was constantly occupied, and he was either talking, writing, or listening. He was a good listener if one had anything to say of value. I remember the time when first I saw him to have a conversation with him. I happened to speak of an effect produced by Euphrasia on the nasal mucus membrane, and some use of this remedy in measles. At once out came his pencil and paper and down it went, subsequently if approved to appear in his portfolio. He always carried with him tablets of paper, about three or four inches in size, on which he wrote all he observed or heard. On these he also noted his cases. I don’t think I ever saw him too weary to tell something which would help others in homeopathy. I don’t remember a time that he was the first to say goodnight.”

Dr. Edward Bayard (p 212), after Hering’s passing.

...“He was not a money-getter. His powers did not work in the direction of accumulating property but he wished to be rich in learning, especially in all that pertained to his profession. He was logical, discriminating, a great lover of nature, and a close observer of her. He was a hard student, of unwearied industry.

“He was engaged at the time of his death in a great work, his ‘Guiding Symptoms’ every sentence in that work was studied over, sometimes for hours, that its true meaning might be expressed. That he might lose no time, his writing desk and materials were placed close to the side of his couch, so that he could arise in the night, light the lamp and continue his work. As for recreation and amusement, he knew little of either outside his profession.”

(Note: Hering loved music, opera, verse and stories, having a keen imagination. He was fond of writing satires to challenge the validity of an attack on him, or homeopathy, by making the attack appear ridiculous. He was proud, but with a sense of humor, and never seemed to give strength to his adversaries by taking things personally. It was as if he had access to the grand view of life and truth. He enjoyed writing fairy tales with a moral, especially against the false precepts of allopathy).

Dr. Bayard continues about the reaction of a remedy:

“Dr. Hering believed that when he produced the impression at the right point, and in the right direction, the force must be permitted to be exhausted; therefore he waited. . . his eyes wide open. . . . looking for that action. He believed that the highest results in his art were obtained by close observation alone; not by generalization. ”

Dr. Hering’s Residence 112-114 Twelfth Street, Philadelphia and on July 23, 1880 . . . .

“At six o’clock in the evening he made his last prescription to a patient, observing to his wife with great animation, and interest, that the patient had been prescribed for by many physicians, and, he believed he should help him. Then he went, as he was accustomed, to take his evening meal with his family, which he greatly enjoyed in that social circle under an arbor in his garden. At eight o’clock, the meal over, Dr. Hering said he would retire to his study and his couch. His devoted wife went with him to aid him in preparing for bed. ‘I believe I shall sleep.’ She left him to his repose. At nine-thirty he touched his bell, which summoned her at once to his side. He remarked that his breathing was embarrassed; accompanied with constant yawning. He asked her to get a book in his office that he might examine the symptom. She did as directed; but being alarmed, sent for a physician. He tried to select a remedy, but too late; a short time after his last words,‘ I am dying now,’ were spoken, he passed into that sleep which knows no waking.”

Born Jan. 1, 1800: Magister Hering, the father of Constantine, a master organist, played the organ at church in Oschatz on New Years Eve. His neighbor brought him the message,“Herr Magister, it is a boy!” Immediately there resounded the Chorale of Martin Luther which called to “Let all give thanks to God.”

On the following day, when there was snow on the ground, the parents believing in the hardening process, carried the child outdoors. When they came back in the house, the child was blue. Hering’s father, who had lost his first-born son , said,“This one must live. The other was weakened by too much coddling!” ( p. 36 )

When Hering sailed from Surinam and arrived near Rhode Island, there was snow on the ground. “I took it up,” he said, “and I was happy.”

From King’s “History of Homeopathy” ( vol.1, p. 138 )

Constantine Hering was the most important factor in the growth of early American homoeopathy. He was a physician, poet, scientist, naturalist, psychologist, scholar, and author. Reaching America just at a time when there was need of someone to organize the few men who were practicing homoeopathy and to find methods to spread the new medical doctrine. Hering was able to accomplish all these things. . . . .

Hering found his first stimulus to natural history on a grapevine, the caterpillar called sphynx atropos. This atropos, followed in later years later by Lachesis, symbolized to him his work in writing the materia medica; spinning threads in a fabric, and when the web was well done, he said, “When I shall be called hence the work will be left on the loom for others to weave.”

Constantine Hering had published essays throughout German, British and American medical journals for fifty years with over three hundred publications, the “Guiding Symptoms of the Materia Medica” being his major work.

Hering conducted over 100 provings; more than Hahnemann himself. As dean and cofounder of the first homeopathic college in America, Hering had brought Hahnemann’s truest teaching to a core of devoted doctors who themselves became the mainstay of the “new” medicine.

He was truly the founding father of homeopathy in America.

Some of Hering’s quotes:

Platina

“When I first read the provings of Platina (by Stapf) when a student, I felt like Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean. It is now nearly fifty years ago.‘ Materia medica will now become a science,’ I said. Palladium stands near Platina. I saw clearly that a new period had arrived with Hahnemann.”

Practice

“We should be governed by symptoms; not by a single one either. Three highly characteristic ones are necessary- like a chair will stand firmly on three legs.”

Proving

Hering said that he began a proving by swallowing the first risings from a mortar, after making a trituration.

Signatura, Cranberries

“Cranberry poultice, recommended for erysipelas, comes under the head of Signatura, a very ancient doctrine, which has much to recommend on the grounds of Similia.”

Philosophy

“Things in nature are words and colors in form; a language which expresses itself to those who can read.”

Thoughts on Religion

“The beginning of wisdom is the realization of God who is without end. God being infinite the realization of Him must be so likewise.”

“God is eternal, therefore true wisdom must be eternal and all science a state of growth. . . .”

“The order of the Universe and the things in it, their progress under constant change, is governed by laws which have their foundation in God , are harmonious, concordant, analogous and inherently alike. ”

Providence

“ Providence permits of no boundaries.”

Hahnemann

“ All of what Hahnemann had left undetermined, or vaguely said, I ground to a finer edge, or made more pointed. ‘We do not heal diseases but sick individuals’, was a great observation. We may say of all who lived before or after him, that there was not one who, in the least, could compare with him. Not a thought of it! Hahnemann could easily be made very angry. But he allowed both of his wives to domineer him ; not in matters of principles or affairs, but in a general way.”

Favorite saying

“Change of occupation is rest.”

Some remedies:

Psorinum

“When in Surinam, I examined a strong healthy looking negro with the itch, a tailor by trade. I looked for the acarus but could not find it. I know that the bug accompanies the disease, but it may be a product caused by the disease, and there may be itch without acarus. I took the pus and poured alcohol over it. It coagulated. I put some of it on a watch glass where crystals formed. I swallowed the potentized preparation. If ever I was sick in my llfe it was then. The effect was shocking.” (From the prover of Lachesis!)

Arum Triphyllum (p. 42)

“I got the Arum triphyllum (Jack in the Pulpit) from an upcountry 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 oldest 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 German’s remedy, the Arum triphyllum, which I administered to each of the three children, in the sixth dilution. All three recovered. “The chief indications of the remedy are soreness of the mouth, cracked lips and salivation.”

Hamamelis (p. 43)

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 that 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.”