FOURTH DAY. GENERAL SESSION. FRIDAY, June 17, 1881. PRESIDENT DOWLING called the Institute to order at 10 o'clock A. M. F. R. MCMANUS, M.D., chairman of the Board of Censors, submitted its final report for the present year; concluding with the statement that one hundred and seven applicants had been elected members of the Institute during the session. On motion, the report was received and referred to the Committee of Publication. (See complete report of the Board of Censors.) On motion of Dr. R. B. Rush, it was Resolved, That the names of the members of the Board of Censors be printed on the annual announcements of the meetings of the Institute, in connection with the names of the other elective officers. THE PRESIDENT: The special order of business arranged by the Executive Committee for the coming hour is a memorial service in commemoration of our deceased members. We will be pleased to hear from the General Secretary. J. C. BURGHER, M.D.: Mr. President and Members of the Institute: The associations of the hour are sad and the memories which they call forth sacred. "Eulogies turn elegies." But a few days ago, by common concert, the citizens of our great commonwealth devoted an entire day to strewing flowers upon and decorating the graves of our patriot soldiers who sacrificed their lives in defence of our homes and firesides. They abide in the deep serenity of death, indifferent alike to sunshine or storm. "On fame's eternal camping ground And glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead." It is eminently fitting, sir, that amidst the prosperity and suc cess which has attended this memorable annual gathering-the festivities and social enjoyment it has afforded-that its crowning act should be the consecration of an hour to the commemoration of those of our number who, since our last meeting, "have joined the innumerable caravan to that mysterious bourn where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death." I need not name them. To each of us some noble brother is mirrored on memory's tablet in the person of the genial Beck with, the noble Stevens, the devoted Ober, the veteran Hering, or some other form whose sterling worth did honor to the profession. Who can say their lives were less imperiled while ministering to loved ones "in the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noon-day," than those who mingled in the clash of arms and din of battle? While we mourn their demise, and fond memory bedews their graves with the unavailing tears of regret, we can neither change their destiny, nor benefit or harm them. And yet, while neither acts or resolves of ours can affect them, they may prove of untold value to ourselves. A pagan writer hands down to us a story of the fabled fountain, Arethusa, which ran from Peloponnesus to Trinacria, through a bitter sea, and then issued forth in a pure and sparkling stream, causing growth and verdure in the distant valley of Ortygia, where the anemone and asphodel paid back their beauty to the stream that gave them birth. And, so far as we emulate the virtues of those we this hour commemorate, we trust there may return to us, from these bitter fountains of regret, streams of sweet memories which their lives give back to remind us, that we too, "Weave the subtle web of life, With colors all our own: THE PRESIDENT: Any member of the Institute is now at liberty to make remarks upon the subject presented by our Secretary: Our Deceased Members. A special request came from the Philadelphia County Medical Society that a special hour be set apart during the session of the Institute for a memorial service for our deceased member, Dr. Constantine Hering. Our Necrologist is now present with us; perhaps it would be highly proper for him to open these exercises. Dr. Paine, this is the memorial service in honor of deceased members who have died during the year. I think it is highly fitting that you should open the exercises. H. D. PAINE, M.D.: Having exhausted what I had to say in regard to our deceased associates in the various memoirs embraced in the necrological report already presented, I do not feel that I ought to occupy the time of the Institute with any further observation on the same subject. Those memoirs will appear in the Transactions, and although they are but brief and imperfect records, they must serve as my contribution to the object of this meeting. Whatever more I might say now, would be, I fear, but a repetition of what I have already expressed. The respectful commemoration of its departed worthies has been a custom of this Society from an early date. It is a dutiful and deserved recognition of the lives and labors of those who have striven faithfully in establishing and promoting a great reform; while the biographical notes included in its Transactions will constitute a fund of permanent and increasing importance to the history of homoeopathy. During the many years that I have served as your Necrologistthe "Old Mortality" of the Institute, as I am sometimes cheerfully called-it has been my endeavor especially to avoid undue adulation and exaggeration, and to make my short sketches truthful, if not flattering. While we mourn for those who have long labored in the cause to which we all are pledged, and whose aid and co-operation we shall no longer enjoy, let us thankfully remember their examples and emulate their virtues. On this occasion our thoughts naturally recur to that great bereavement which our school, and especially this Institute, has suffered since our last session, and in commemoration of which, it is understood, we are now chiefly called together. The name of Constantine Hering is so closely identified with the history of homœopathy, his figure stands out so prominently in the progress of our art, and his writings have exerted so wide an influence in its development, that his death, though at the end of so long a career, could not but produce a profound impression throughout our extremest ranks. It is eminently proper that an event so important and impressive should be distinguished by a special solemnity. My feeble tribute to his memory has been already offered. There are those present far better able to speak, not only of his public and lasting services to the cause to which so much of his life was devoted, but of those rare virtues that shone so conspicuous in his private relations. I am anxious to hear from them. THE PRESIDENT: Any member of the Institute is now in order with remarks on any of the deceased members. DR. J. C. MORGAN, Philadelphia: Having already, as Dr. Paine has said, exhausted such reflections as seemed worthy of our deceased colleague, Dr. Hering, in connection with our two Philadelphia meetings, I had thought to remain silent here. It may explain the backwardness of other Philadelphia members, perhaps, to say that this is the case with many of them. They feel, too, that they have passed the subject of his death into the more sacred precincts of the memory. The revival of it here by us, you will therefore understand, is attended with something like the pain that one has in the uncovering of an old and partly healed wound, or one, at least, which has become quiet; my colleagues from Philadelphia have, however, requested me to introduce this subject of such national interest. Permit me, then, to make reference to my personal acquaintance with Dr. Hering. I will commence with one point, very important to me personally, by saying that in boyhood, when Dr. Hering was yet in the vigor of his youth, I was taken to him for the purpose of medical treatment by a friend of his, one of his early supporters, and also a friend of my own, Mrs. Rev. Dr. Bedell, and my recollection is of the prescriptions made by Dr. Hering that they were eminently 'successful. We had no further personal relations for very many years. In the meantime I had become a physician of the old school, later of the homoeopathic school. Even then, my acquaintance with Dr. Hering was not renewed; this was partly owing to the fact that those from whom I had just derived my impressions of homœopathy were his opponents; as Dr. Helmuth so finely mentioned last night in his poem, they had had disagreements in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. It so happened that I learned my homœopathy along with antagonism to Dr. Hering. I was taught to believe that he was a visionary-to use the words of my informant, "an eccentric;" I, therefore, in all the pride of my youth, and with my but half regenerate allopathic mind, refrained from making his acquaintance, and I will add, that I am heartily ashamed to have to say it. I was, however, introduced to Dr. Hering without my own knowledge, and in a way most characteristic of Dr. Hering. My home was in Illinois, a thousand miles from his. I made a two weeks' proving of Gelsemium, published in Dr. Shipman's Journal of Materia Medica. Dr. Hering's peculiarity was that he would seize upon provings wherever he found them, and with the skill of the anatomist would dissect them, and determine their essential points. It was my good fortune, therefore, to meet Dr. Hering's skill in the discussion of my proving of that drug. That is to say, he found therein that now historical symptom, viz., that depressing emotions produce a tendency to diarrhoeic disturbance of the intestinal canal. It was observed by me in April, 1861, on reading the telegrams of the firing on Fort Sumpter; these so disturbed me that I gave up the proving, and stated it as a fact that the telegram produced that effect. But Dr. Hering, with that sagacity which was so peculiar to him, with that keen eye and that analytical skill in materia medica in which he was facile princeps, seized upon the very thing which I thought was vitiating the proving; said he, "There is the grand characteristic of that drug." Years later, after I had returned to Philadelphia, and become acquainted with him and others associated with him, I found that it had been erected into what is now called a key-note. He gave me back my finding; and there are a thousand other such gems that we owe to Dr. Hering. In this way, then, he had become acquainted with me, and when I met him in the college, he was prepared, and I was prepared to form, as we did form, a warm and sympathetic friendship. I soon found out that I had been utterly misled in regard to the character-the intellectual character, I mean, of Dr. Hering. No one dared breathe anything other than profound respect for his moral character. I have to say here, ladies and gentlemen, that I believe Dr. Hering has been unfortunately misunderstood in this respect. He 1 |