Henry Clay Allen

Henry Clay ALLEN(1836-1909, US)

Life

Dr. Henry C. Allen was born (on February 10, 1836) in the village of Nilestown, near London, Ontario, and was the son of Hugh and Martha Billings Allen. On his paternal side, he was a descendant of that distinguished family of Vermonters of the same name, Gen. Ira Allen and Ethan Allen, both famous in the revolution. On his maternal side, the Billings' were well known among the Colonial families of Massachussetts Bay, and one of them, the great-grand-father of Dr. Allen, owned the farm lands on which the present city of Salem is built. After selling this property, the family moved to Deerfield, in the Connecticut Valley and were there at the time the Indians pillaged and ravaged that part of the country.

He received his early education in the common and grammar schools at London, where he later taught school for a time. His medical education was acquired at the Western Homeopathic College at Cleveland, Ohio (now the Cleveland Homeopathic College), where he graduated in 1861, and later from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Shortly after graduation, he entered the Union Army, serving as a surgeon under General Grant.

After the war he was offered and accepted the professorship on Anatomy in his Alma Mater at Cleveland, and it was here that he first started practicing medicine. Later he resigned and accepted the same chair in the Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago. In 1868 he was offered the Chair of Surgery to succeed Dr. Beebe, but was unable to accept. He then located in Brantford, Ontario, where on December 24th, 1867, he married Selina Louise Goold, who, with his two children, Franklin Lyman Allen and Helen Marian Allen Aird, survives him.

In 1875 he moved to Detroit, Michigan, and in 1880, being appointed Professor of Materia Medica at the University of Michigan, he moved to Ann Arbor, where he has since resided.

In 1892 he founded the Hering Medical College and Hospital, of which he was Dean and Professor of Materia Medica until his death, January 22nd, 1909.

Merits

H.C. Allen was an honorable senior of the American Institute of Homeopathy ; a number of the International Hahnemannian Association ; of the Illinois Homeopathic Medical Association ; of the Englewood Homeopathic Medical Society ; of the Regular Homeopathic Medical Society of Chicago ; Honorary Vice-President of the Cooper Club of London, England ; and Honorary Member of the Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio State Medical Societies and Honorary Member of the Homeopathic Society of Calcutta, India.

Work

He was owner and editor of the Medical Advance for many years. Besides writing many articles in this and other magazines he wrote numerous books, among which are the following:

• Keynotes of Leading Remedies, lately placed on the Council List of Books for use in the Canadian Medical Colleges;
• The Homeopathic Therapeutics of Intermittent Fever
• The Homeopathic Therapeutics of Fevers
• Therapeutics of Tuberculous Affections

and he also completed the revision of Bœnninghausen's Slip Repertory, which he brought down to date and arranged for rapid and practical work.

This, his latest work, a treatise on the Nosodes, was completed only a short time before his death, and was the result of years of study, experience, and of proving and confirming the symptomatology of many of the nosodes.

Note: This biography was written by the son of Henry C., Franklin Lyman Allen. It was issued in the posthumous edited "Materia medica of the nosodes with provings of the X-Ray", Philadelphia: Boericke & Tafel, 1910.