Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/529

 HERING

MERRICK

the therapeutics of leprosy. He studied the habits and customs of the differ- ent peoples, specially the Arrowwack- ian Indians, penetrating deep into the trackless forests to meet them and it was there he found the lach- esis trigonacephalus whose attenuated vemon has since healed so many. He and his wife were living in 1828 in a little camp on the Amazon and the natives had told him of a deadly ser- pent living there, so he offered a re- ward for a live one. One day they brought in a bamboo box, and then fled from the place. He and his wife were alone. As the box was opened he struck the snake a blow on the head, pinned the head with a forked stick and pressed out the poison on sugar of milk. This was all the supply for many years in making the prepara- tion of lachesis. The snake is now in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

A few years later he sailed from South America to return to Saxony, but was shipwrecked and stayed a while in Philadelphia, finally settling there to practise and founding the School of Homeopathy in Allentown and the Hahnemann Medical College in Phila- delphia in which he became a physician. He also edited "The American Jour- nal of Materia Medica." His "Domes- tic Physician" went through six edi- tions here and ten in Germany and was translated into seven languages. The "Effects of Snake Poison" ap- peared in 1837, the "Suggestions for the Proving of Drugs" in 1853. In 1866 he translated Gross' "Comparative Materia Medica," and nine years later published his own "Analytical Thera- peutics." Of his largest work, "Guid- ing Symptoms," for which he gather- ed an enormous amount of material. the third volume was completed ju>t before his death, which occurred half past ten on the evening of July L':!, L880. He had suffered fur ome time from severe attacks of asthma, lint the night ol his death seemed

cheery and better. Severe dyspnea set in rather suddenly and he was gone before his medical friends had come to his aid.

From data supplied by Dr. Thomas Lindsley

Bradford, who has several portraits in his

possession.

Hist, of Homeopathy, vol. i., N. Y., 1905.

Amer. Institute Trans., 18S1.

The Hahnemannian, 1880, vol. ii.

Herrick, Henry Justus (1833-1901).

Henry Justus Herrick, a prominent physician of Cleveland, Ohio, of New England descent, was born in Aurora, Portage County, Ohio, January 20, 1833. While yet a lad, his father re- moved to Twinsburg, Summit County, Ohio, where the boy divided his time between labor upon the farm or in a sawmill and attendance during the winter at the ordinary district school, in 1854 entering Williams College, supporting himself by teaching school during the vacations, and graduating there in 1S58. On his return to Ohio in 1858, he studied under Dr. Martin L. Brooks, of Cleveland, Ohio, and in I860 went to Chicago and continued with Dr. Brainard, matriculating in the Rush Medical College and graduating there in 1861. After a tour of service in the United States Marine Hospital at Chicago, Dr. Herrick returned to Cleveland and became assistant to Dr. Brooks, his old preceptor, in the charge of the United States Marine Ho pital. In 1 862, however, he was commissioned assistant surgeon of the Seventeenth regiment of Ohio infantry; promoted to surgeon in the same year; captured at the battle of Chickam spent two months in the Libby Prison and was exchanged and followed (len- eral Sherman in his famous inarch to the sea. During a short furlough in 1863 he married Mary Brooks, the daughter of his former preceptor. Two of his sons al o became doctor \.\

the el i the war Dr. Herrick spent

several months in New Vork City to refresh his medical knowledge, then

returned to Cleveland and continued