Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/540

NAME HERING 518 HERING world at Allentown, Pennsylvania, called "The North American Academy of the Homeopathic Healing Art." Another institu- tion that owed its origin to Dr. Hering was "The American Institute of Homeopathy," founded April 10, 1844, Dr. Hering being its first president. In February, 1848, the Ho- meopathic College of Pennsylvania was found- ed by Constantine Hering, Jacob Joanes and Walter Williamson, and Hering was elected professor of materia medica, September 7, the same year. From 1864-67 he was professor of the institutes of homeopathy and practical medi- cine ; 1867-69 of the institutes and materia medica. When the Homeopathic College of Pennsylvania merged with the Hahnemann Medical College, in 1869, Hering was pro- fessor of the institutes and materia medica until 1871 ; he was dean from 1867 to 1871, and emeritus professor of the institutes and materia medica from 1876 to 1880. He established the American Journal of Homeopathic Materia Medica. Hering's great work was the Homeopathic Materia Medica. He wrote some three hundred and twenty- five articles mostly on remedies and indications for their use : he either edited or wrote eighty- nine books or pamphlets. His "Domestic Physician" had fourteen edi- tions in Germany, seven in America, two in England, and was translated into many lan- guages. The following books by Hering are in daily use by physicians : "Analytical Thera- peutics ; or Symptoms of the Mind" ; "Con- densed Materia Medica"; and the translation and revision of Gross' "Comparative Materia Medica." But his greatest achievement in medical literature was "The Guiding Symp- toms of our Materia Medica," in ten vol- umes, to which he gave fifty years of his life. Hering proved ninety-one drugs ; his work in this line was greater than that of any other physician — Hahnemann himself proved but sixty-four. His method in conducting a prov- ing is shown in a report of the committee appointed by the American Provers Union, Philadelphia, 1853. Hering's masterpiece was Lachesis, the poison of the Lachesis Trigonocephalus ; eigh- ty-eight pages in the Guiding Symptoms give a record of 3,800 symptoms. His provings of Apis Mellifica have been of great value ; he proved nitroglycerine to which he gave the name of Glonoine; he was the first to pro- pose triturations and dilutions in the decimal scale instead of in the centesimal scale used by Hahnemann. Paracelsus was his delight and he had a splendid collection of his works, which after his death was secured by the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. The col- lection comprises one hundred and eighty- nine titles of books, eighteen volumes of bound pamphlets, inanuscripts on Paracelsus, written by Hering; also thirty pictures of Paracelsus, his residence, his study and a photograph of his skull. It is interesting to note that the Paracelsus system was a crude homeopathy. Paracelsus said : "Likes must be driven out by likes. What makes jaundice, that also cures jaundice and all its species" ; and again, "The medicine that shall cure paralysis must proceed from that which causes it." In "On the Causes and Origin of Lues Gallica," Paracelsus com- pares the medicinal power of the drug to fire : "As a single spark can ignite a great heap of wood, indeed can set a whole forest in flames, in a like manner can a very small dose of medicine overpower a great disease." Paracelsus also rails at compounding several medicines in one prescription. In 1843, after Hahnemann's death, Madame Hahnemann invited Hering to Paris to take the practice of her husband, but he declined. Hering lived at 112 and 114 North 12th Street, where he kept to the old German custom of having two medical students live with his family to keep in touch with the work and progress of the College. Here was his study where he slept and where he worked daily from three o'clock A. M. until eight, while the great city slept about him ; on the day he died he was at work on Calcarea carb., or "ostrearum," as he called it, as it was made from the oyster shell. Our Nosodes (disease products), like Psorinum, Ambragrisea, etc., made a favorite subject with Hering. He introduced and gave the first impulse to Isopathy in 1830 when he proposed as a remedy for hydrophobia the saliva of the rabid dog; for smallpox, matter from variolous pustules ; for psora, the matter of itch. In 1833 Dr. Hering wrote a paper in which he extols psorine, prepared itch matter ; he be- lieved it better to give Psorinum prepared from the patient's own body — what' he calls auto-psorine. Leucorrheal matter he says is curative of leucorrhea ; gleet matter of gleet; phthisinc of pythisis; syphiline of syphilis, admitting that these isopathic preparations can be regarded only as chronic intei mediate rem-