President’s Message: Our Leaders’ Lineage

February is the month of presidents. With Presidents’ Day freshly observed, it seems a fitting moment to reflect on a question that may surprise even our most historically minded colleagues: Who was the first president of the American Institute of Homoeopathy? The answer, documented in our own founding minutes, is not who many have assumed. It has sometimes been suggested that the great Constantine Hering served as our first president. And indeed, in July of 1843, it was Hering who chaired the New York Homoeopathic Physicians’ Society meeting that appointed a committee to draft invitations for a national convention, a visionary act that set our founding in motion. But when the American Institute of Homœopathy held its first official session on April 10, 1844, at the Lyceum of Natural History in New York City, on the anniversary of Hahnemann’s birth, it was Dr. Josiah F. Flagg of Boston who was chosen Chairman for the session. The minutes record plainly: “Dr. Flagg, of Boston, was chosen, ‘viva voce,’ Chairman for the session.” Hering’s visionary leadership was indispensable to the founding, but Flagg held the chair at that first gathering, and in 1844, the chair was the presidency.

What’s in a Name: President, Chair, and the Language of Leadership

The word “president” comes from the Latin praesidere, meaning “to sit before” or “to preside over.” It entered English in the fourteenth century, initially describing anyone who held a position of oversight or governance over an assembly or institution. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the term was applied broadly to leaders of learned societies, academic bodies, and collegiate institutions, long before it became primarily associated with heads of state. A president, at its root, is simply one who presides: who sits at the front, calls things to order, and takes responsibility for the conduct of the gathering.

Equally ancient is the word “chairman,” derived from the simple physical act of occupying a distinguished seat of authority. In the formal meeting culture of nineteenth-century learned societies, to be “in the chair” was to preside with full authority over an assembly. The person who occupied that chair, whether called Chairman, Chair, or President, was the same officer: the one who called the meeting to order, preserved decorum, put all questions to the membership, and announced decisions. Our own early AIH minutes reflect this usage throughout the first two decades of the organization’s life, listing each year’s presiding officer as “Chairman for the session.” It was not until 1865 with the 18th session held in Cincinnati following the silence of the Civil War years that our records began consistently using the title “President.” The role was unchanged; only the name had evolved with the times.

What did matter, then as now, was the vision and integrity that each leader brought to that chair. The title is incidental. The responsibility is everything.

182 Years, One Unbroken Lineage

Since that founding day in April of 1844, the American Institute of Homœopathy has been led by 138 physicians serving across 182 years of recorded leadership. Some served a single year; others guided our organization through multiple terms, steering us through the upheavals of the Civil War, two World Wars, and the dramatic reshaping of American medicine across the twentieth century. Each brought something irreplaceable to our mission. Together they form the longest unbroken chain of professional leadership in American medical history.

It is my honor to present them here, in full, as a testament to the dedication that has sustained this Institute through every era: