Henry Clay Allen: A Fictional Autobiography

(A semi-fictionalized account of his life as if told in Dr. Allen’s own words.)

 

 

If I had known I was to die this evening, Friday the 22nd of October 1909, I would have at least made time for a hearty and delicious lunch. But, as was my custom, a hot chocolate was often all the time I could allow myself for the noon repast. And that is what I partook of today. You see, I am what is called a workaholic. My custom is to rise early, sometimes as early as four in order to tend my writing upon a large and well-worn desk located in the cozy and book-ladened adjoining den. I would close, though not completely, the door so as to not disturb my wife’s remaining hour of slumber. The maid servant, who arose also at a similar hour, would bring me a steaming cup of herbed tea with a generous helping of honey and milk therein mixed. I would begin my day thusly, enjoying approximately two hours of uninterrupted literary activity.

 

Generally, this is how I started every day with the exception of the sabbath which I devotedly kept in a somewhat contemplative manner. However, I did engage in clinical work, in other words seeing patients, if it was absolutely necessary. Otherwise, I spent my Sundays doing some light reading after which a moderate walk stimulated my appetite sufficiently to relish a family supper at precisely one o’clock. Aside from family, I’d have two students join the table—a man and a woman. It served me well to have two and of differing genders as I sought to have the most varied discourse possible. Being so engaged with the medical college as I am, it is necessary to maintain an awareness of the goings on from other perspectives. It was in 1892 that several other doctors and myself founded the Hering Homeopathic College and Hospital here in Chicago. That was about seventeen years ago to my recollection and the operations of said institution were, at least to my mind, more than satisfactory.

 

After my breakfast of porridge, raisins, toasted flat bread and a small cup of black coffee, I’d be off to catch the train and stare absently out the window during the ten minute ride to the hospital. After rounding on my patients which took anywhere from half to three-quarters of an hour, I’d leisurely walk to my office at the college all the while ruminating about the patients I’d just seen. Entering my office, I would have enjoyed a brief chat with the secretary, perused the day’s correspondence and enjoyed a visit with a student or two before preparing myself for the two-hour materia medica lecture which would commence at eleven A.M. sharp. I was not one to tolerate tardiness; in fact, I admonished the students to be in their places early so as to cultivate the proper mood before the start of the period. If one were ‘in the mood’ as it were, the time was just that much better spent and worthwhile. If a student was late, and that didn’t happen oft, he’d have to apologize while standing before taking his place. That, plus my pointed stare, secured an allegiance of which I had become accustomed.

 

Anyway, I am not one to boast, but ‘in the mood’ is something I have long been cultivating, and it has permitted me to develop a large medical practice and time to compose several useful works for the homeopathic community. Those include Therapeutics of Intermittent Fever (1879), Therapeutics of Fevers (1902), Keynotes to the Materia Medica (1898), and The Materia Medica of the Nosodes (1910). I also served as editor of a journal, the Medical Advance, for a period of time.

 

Umm, as long as I am on this train of thought, allow me to relate a bit more about myself.

 

I was born in Canada on October 2nd, 1836, and spent my early years in London, Canada. I received my medical education in Ontario at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and my homeopathic medical degree, in 1861, from the Cleveland Homoeopathic College. On December 24th of 1867, Selina Louise Goold and I wed.

 

We produced two children.

 

My private medical practice had to wait as the first application of my medical knowledge was during the Civil War when I was employed as a “contract surgeon” by the Union. You may not know what an “acting assistant surgeon volunteer,” as they were also called, was; so let me explain. We were not inducted into military service but hired to perform surgeries and other procedures related to surgery, such as laboratory tests, medicine dispensing and anesthesiology, which was a young and developing medical science. Those so hired carried no formal commission from the army and, though being listed as volunteers, received pay equal to that of a first lieutenant.

 

Be that as it may, after the war I began my medical practice and also taught anatomy at my alma mater in Cleveland. I continued further professorial work at the Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago, and later taught materia medica at the Homoeopathic Medical Department of the University of Michigan from 1880 to 1885. In 1892, as previously mentioned, several colleagues, most notably J.B.S. King, and I decided to found the Hering Homoeopathic College in Chicago, in which I served as Dean and Chair of the Materia Medica Department. Three years later, in 1895, the Dunham Medical College was founded with a goal similar to my own—to stay true to pure homeopathy. In 1900, Dr. James Tyler Kent had relocated from Philadelphia to Chicago to continue his postgraduate school and to take on teaching duties at Dunham. Three years after that, in 1903, the Dunham school closed and merged with the institution I helped found—Hering Medical College.

 

As you can imagine, I joined the usual measure of homeopathic medical organizations, such as the American Institute of Homoeopathy and the International Hahnemannian Association, of which I was President in 1886. All along, however, I continued my teaching and writing.

 

I developed a machine to produce very high potencies, but I can’t recall exactly when I did so, and, if I ever wrote an article about those experiences or even a description of the mechanism I invented—a product of but modest efforts—I cannot, for the life of me, recall. Surely there must be some information of that sort amongst my papers, but I have as yet been unable to locate it. I will tell you this much however: my fluxion machine was used by Erhart and Karl to make potencies up to MMM of about 250 remedies. That remedy manufacturing company started with a CM potency made by Kent’s potentizer and then with mine produced DMs, MMs, CMMs, DMMs and higher.

 

Today, my final day upon this blessed earth, ended in my home and, thankfully, in the presence of several family members. After conducting my rounds in the hospital, I arrived home a bit before six o’clock to find a single patient awaiting my services. After prescribing for and dismissing that patient, I telephoned Dr. E. Edward Sayre to see if he might visit me this evening in order to examine my chest. He said he’d come right away, but I suggested he come after his office hours. However, shortly after six o’clock, my son called Sayre requesting that he come right away by cab. In the meantime, I had stretched myself out on the couch and called out to my family as I felt some pain in my chest. It was my heart, I had no doubt, so I took a dose of Cactus. The rest happened as related by Dr. Sayre:

 

“I [Sayre] hurried out and found him unconscious, pulseless; no heart beat could be felt, but it could be heard faintly with a stethoscope.

 

“Dr. Hobson had reached him before me and had given Cactus, but he was beyond human aid.

 

“Another attack must have come on soon after calling me up, for he asked the servant to call his wife and daughter. Evidently, he felt that the end was coming for his wife said that he never called her before, and when they entered the office, he asked for Cactus; in a few minutes he said he felt better. Then he asked his son-in-law, who had come in, to raise him up. He took a few deep breaths and became unconscious.

 

“Thus passed away one of the most kindly men, never an ill word for any one, always hopeful, always looking at the bright side, and the most indefatigable worker that I ever knew. Though past seventy-two, few men in the prime of life could do as much work. While taking care of an enormous practice, he edited the Medical Advance, and revised and completed Boenninghausen’s Slip Repertory, giving us the most valuable aid to finding ‘the remedy’ yet produced.

 

“He passed away as he would have chosen. I have heard him say that he would like to ‘die in the harness,’ and he worked at his beloved profession up to the last minute.” – Dr. E. Edward Sayre (The Hering Quarterly, 1:4, February, 1909, p. 82; pp. 77-87).

 

Several others made comments as found in this same article: “The Organon was to him a medical bible: His whole soul was in the work of practicing and teaching pure Homeopathy.” – Thomas G. Roberts (p. 84).

 

“He could always be depended upon. He did not shrink responsibility. He had a strong hand, a cool head and a true heart. His death is a great loss to scientific medicine.” – Dr. T. A. Wilson (p. 87).

 

“If every one of whom he did a kind act were to bring a blossom to his grave he would sleep tonight beneath a wilderness of flowers.” – Dr. E. A. Taylor (p. 83).

 

NB: Material for this article was sourced from Julian Winston’s Faces of Homoeopathy (2020 reprinted edition available from www.homeopathyworks. com), W.H. King’s History of Homoeopathy (1905) and an article from The Hering Quarterly as provided by the editor, Dr. Alex Bekker.

 

 

About the Author: Jay Yasgur, MSc, is a pharmacist, author and homeopathic consultant who has written many book reviews, articles and his “Yasgur’s Homeopathic Dictionary and Holistic Health Reference” is a popular (on Amazon).

 

He has produced and edited several other works, e.g., :Some Clinical Experiences of E. E. Case,” “111 Great Homeopaths,” “The Dunham Lectures of Kent,” “Homoeopathic Materia Medica for Nurses” (B. C. Woodbury, Jr.), Glen Dupree’s “Homeopathic Thesaurus, etc.” Mr. Yasgur was the first to offer an accredited homeopathy continuing education program for pharmacists in the US. Mr. Yasgur’s next edition (5th) of his Dictionary will be published later this year.