health of the patient is very good. Unsuccessful as this case certainly has been so far as regards cure it cannot be regarded as unsuccessful so far as regards relief. The condition of the patient at her first appearance was such that I am assured no surgeon, however fond of the knife, would have attempted its use, and all that remained for her, to all human appearance, was a few weeks of intense suffering to terminate in an agonising death. Two years of ease and comfort have already, whatever the end may be, been added to her life.

If I were asked what case I would like to take as an evidence of what may be done by this treatment I would certainly take that of J. M. (CASE VII). For eighteen months she has returned to her duties of a gate keeper and remains perfectly well. As described in the history of her case we only adopted the treatment as giving her a remote chance, but in no case, so far as twenty months can warrant such a statement, could there be the appearance of a more perfect

cure.

CASE VIII likewise remains in perfect health.

Of CASE IX I am not in a condition to give any report. I never saw this patient and have not since the record appeared had any account of her from my late colleague; had he not been so hastily torn from us he would have been able himself to have stated how it terminated.

This day month (I write on February 25) we were conversing on Case X. The patient has spent two years and a half in comparative health and comfort. Small fungoid growths have occasionally sprung up, but by the application of a little dilute nitric acid, which she has been able to apply herself, they have been again destroyed and the part has cicatrised afresh. To compare the condition of this patient when admitted in 1862 into the Bath Homœopathic Hospital with the report she gave of herself, in writing to Dr. MacLimont only a few days before his death, was a sufficient recompense for all the pains he took in her case and for all the obloquy cast upon

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him for admitting it into the hospital; while it might cause a blush of shame in those who would have turned her adrift to suffer and to die.

On the whole then, I think that it will appear that the continued history of these cases is satisfactory, and that it justifies the course we adopted in publishing them and in pressing a trial of the treatment upon those of our colleagues into whose hands suitable cases may fall. I could not now say that we have had no unsuccessful cases. I could not, indeed, say that there has been discovered a cure for cancer. In two or three cases the disease has returned in the cicatrix very shortly after its removal, and with perhaps a greater degree of malignancy than characterised its first appearance, and this failure has not occurred only in our hands, but the worst cases of the kind which have come under our observation (one of whom lately died as Dr. MacLimont's patient) had been treated by one who makes this disease a spécialité.

So far as the question of enucleation is concerned we (if it be allowed me now to write in the plural) should endorse the opinion of the Middlesex Hospital surgeons that the same principles should guide us in selecting our cases as guide the best surgeons in using the knife; with this important provision, that there are cases which from their situation, &c., would be precluded from a cutting operation which can be readily reached by enucleation; the most important considerations are those which are involved in cases where there is much induration extending into the axilla, where the parts around are oedematous, or where there is reason to suspect any internal disease.

One great advantage of this treatment, however, consists in its applicability as a palliative in certain incurable cases. A lady from South Wales consulted me last spring, who had submitted within a few months to two cutting operations, the

* At the earnest solicitation of a patient in whom this condition existed, I consented to make an attempt, and to give her a chance. The disease, however, outran all efforts to overtake it, and the patient died with the wound unhealed.

disease having returned almost as soon as the first wound had healed. A short respite was obtained after the second operation, but only a short one, and her surgeons felt that no more could be done. When she came under my care, an oval space, measuring seven inches in its longest diameter, was found to be occupied with two highly raised bosses of cancerous tissue ulcerated throughout their whole extent, and separated for nearly their whole length by a chasm in some parts more than two inches deep, reaching very closely to the ribs; the constant and profuse offensive discharge which was flowing from this mass of disease rendered the patient a nuisance to herself and to all who came near her, while frequent outbursts of hæmorrhage caused her much alarm. I should have sent her home at once but for the recommendation of my lost friend, who advised to enucleate as much as possible, and setting to work with a good heart, I have had the satisfaction to send her home in a good state of general health, free from pain and discharge, and with a wound no larger than a sixpenny piece, which was promising to heal. A cancerous tumour existed in the upper part of the opposite breast, which, while under the treatment, greatly diminished. The best evidence of the benefit of the treatment is, perhaps, found in the fact that her own medical man (an allopathic surgeon of great repute) sent me a patient suffering from cancer soon after her return.

The question which really arises is not so much, Can we by this means cure the disease? but can anything at all be done in this dreadful malady? if so, can anything better be done? Can anything so good be done? Some cases are cured by the knife, but how very few; with one exception, the cases in which we performed enucleation two years ago or nearly so, remain well. If it be objected that this method, as was stated in No. 87 of this Journal, " has been hitherto confined to foreign adventurers," I only reply that if this is true and if there is any worth in the treatment, the way to take it out of the hands of such is to treat them ourselves. We all have such patients to deal with, the treatment is one which all skilful practitioners can practise for themselves, and therefore it is

our own fault if we suffer patients, who come to us for aid, to fall into the hands of such persons. My object is not so much to commend this especial mode of treatment, as to give my professional brethren an opportunity of judging for themselves, and to urge upon them that they should do their best, whatever that best may be, for the relief of a malady which, in the present state of our knowledge, our very best still leaves one of the most terrible which flesh is heir to.

In a recent paper read by Dr. Bayes before the British Homœopathic Society, he observes that the value of Hydrastis appears to be evidenced especially in those cases in which the glands only are affected. Our own experience, if I except Case V (in which the diseased condition of the uterus was much bettered), bears out this observation, and I am inclined to agree with him that it is rather through a specific action which it exerts upon the glandular structures than through any specific action upon cancer as such, that the favorable results which often follow its use depend.

SMALLPOX IN LEICESTER IN 1864.
By DR. GUTTEridge.

FROM the spring to the end of the year this epidemic was largely prevalent, so much so as to afford an unusually good opportunity for testing the efficacy of homœopathy in its treatment. From the outset I was resolved to give what may be termed the old remedies of our method a fair trial, leaving the newly introduced specifics in reserve; whether I was justified in relying throughout on the old and discarding the new must be left for the results to determine.

A brisk demand in all branches of our manufacture led to a very large influx of strangers from all parts of the country, by some of these the epidemic was imported, its spread being favoured by the overcrowding, consequent on the unanticipated addition to our population; and that the disease was not of a worse type nor more generally fatal must be attributed

to the sanitary arrangements and good drainage which have made Leicester as famous as it is for its hosiery, shoes, and elastic fabric.

All ages appeared to have been attacked, my cases ranged from two years old to sixty-five, though by far the greater majority were young persons; from March to October inclusive, rather more than eighty persons of different ages were under my care-of these ten per cent. were confluent, only one out of this class unvaccinated, ten per cent. semiconfluent, all vaccinated, the remainder modified, three of the latter had the initial fever only (or variola sine eruptione). Three cases remained vesicular throughout, never reaching the pustular stage.

Treatment. For the initial fever with pains in the back and nausea, Aconite, three drops of the mother tincture to 8 ounces of water, a tablespoonful for a dose every two hours was administered. In the early stage in some few, violent sore throat was the predominant symptom, in one pneumonia, in two others pleurisy, in these exceptional cases the treatment was modified according to the symptoms. As soon as the slightest indication of an eruption was visible-this sometimes occurred first on the chest-tartar emetic of the 2nd trituration one or one and a half grains for a dose was alternated every four hours with the Aconite, until the pustules matured, which in the worst cases they did in five days, in the slight cases in three days. For the secondary fever with salivation, sore throat, and swelling of the face, where they obtained, Belladonna, 3rd dilution, and Mercurius vivus, 5th dilution, half drop doses alternately every four hours. These medicines were needed only with the confluent and semi-confluent. The far greater number after the Aconite and Tartar emetic required only Thuja internally in quarter-drop doses every three hours, with olive-oil ad libitum smeared over the face with a feather to allay the itching, dry up the pustules, and prevent pitting.

Results. Of the number referred to above four died, three children of highly strumous habit between two and three years of age, and one young man æt. 26, an epileptic, with