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Hering accidentally proved the remedy Lachesis while
he was triturating the Bushmasters venom in his home-laboratory in Paramaribo.
He was attempting to find an improved substitute for the cowpox inoculation
that Jenner was developing in Britain, which Hering felt was extremely
dangerous and very heavy-handed for homeopathy. His interest and experience
with snake venom led him to surmise that the saliva of a rabid dog,
or powdered smallpox scabs, or any other disease products, viruses,
or venom's, might be prepared in the new Hahnemannian way to give a
fail-safe method of curing disease. In this manner Hering unwittingly
became the first in the Isopathic movement (eventually, he also unwittingly
paralyzed his right side from further self-testing or "prufung"
of higher and higher attenuations of Lachesis). Hering stayed in Paramaribo
for six years then sailed for Philadelphia in 1833. His ship was destroyed
in a storm when approaching the mainland of America, but Hering and
the crew manned the longboats and made shore at Martha's Vineyard where
Hering settled before finally moving to Philadelphia. In 1848 Hering
chartered the Hahnemann Medical College of Pennslyvania which is still
considered to be one of greatest homeopathic teaching institutions of
all time (next to Kents Post Graduate School). There Hering and his
students treated over 50,000 patients a year and trained a total of
3500 homeopaths.
Hering began organizing his voluminous notes into
his still popular classic The Guiding Symptoms of Our Materia Medica
the year before he died, in 1879, and it was completed by his students
and published posthumously in 1891. Constantine Hering is widely known
as "The Father of American Homeopathy" and was profoundly
revered by his contemporaries. For the last forty years of his life,
he could be seen striding the avenues of Philadelphia, scribbling down
voluminous data into an immense collection of notebooks he kept. If
he passed another homeopath on the street Hering would greet him with
friendly salutations and then press him for as many new discoveries
found in his practice as he would give, the finer points of which Hering
would enter into one of the well-worn notebooks. Constantine Hering
lived and died by his motto: Die milde Macht ist gross, "The force
of gentleness is magnificent".
(Photo: The original painting is on wood (the white spots are missing
flakes of paint), and it is hanging at he National Center for Homeopathy
in Philadelphia)
James Tyler Kent ( 1849 - 1916 )
"You cannot divorce Medicine and Theology. Man
exists all the way down, from his innermost Spiritual to his
outermost Natural.
"Kent may have equaled or even surpassed
the genius of Hahnemann by delivering a highly accessible and profoundly
refined form of homeopathy to the 20th century.
Little is known about Kent's personal
life as he was a very private  man.
Kent practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis where he first discovered,
then converted to, homeopathy through the successful homeopathic treatment
of his seriously ailing wife by Dr. Richard Phelan (a graduate of Hahnemann
College). In 1888 Kent was invited to become a consulting Physician
at a new "all homeopathic" hospital in Philadelphia, there
he founded his legendary Post-Graduate School. Kent was an avid Swedenborgian
and proponent of high potencies (200-c and up), often prescribing the
CM and MM potencies and inspiring the "Kentians" with his
belief that the homeopath must treat not only the patients physical
body, but also the mental/emotional and spiritual elements simultaneously
which required using the higher potencies. Kent's famous Repertory was
more systematic and readable than its precursors and is still the popular
choice today. Kent developed "pictures" of constitutional
types of patients, i.e.: Sulphur as "the ragged philosopher"
etc. Later, his pupil, Margaret Tyler, developed this idea further in
her book, Homeopathic Drug Pictures, and more recently Mr. Geroge Vithoulkas
has developed his own profoundly insightful "essence pictures"
along similar lines. The influence and popularity of Kent's interpretation
of homeopathic philosophy has steadily increased around the world since
his death.
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"With
every breath I take I cherish the memory of my fatherland. Never have
I forgotten it, for a moment. No one knows what he loses when he leaves
the land of his birth, a stranger in a strange land: I bore it all for
sake of homeopathy. This, now, is the country of my children."
