scientific, are dumb in the presence of cholera, are the anxious public to be left to draw the melancholy conclusion that medicine is altogether powerless, that they are to be left unaided in the presence of the pestilence or at best to content themselves with the meagre advice to look to their water-closets and dust-bins? Not so, for precisely when the arrogant medicine of the schools throws up the sponge and wrings its hands in hopeless impotence, the despised followers of Hahnemann step into the place vacated by it and offer to the threatened sufferers from the pestilence a method which a multiplied experience has shown to be of wondrous efficacy in the cure of this most terrible and fatal of maladies.

Proofs of the vast superiority of the homoeopathic over other methods of treating cholera exist in published and authoritative documents which we may briefly recall to the memory of our readers.

When the cholera raged in Vienna in 1836, the Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy in the Gumpendorf suburb of that city was ordered by the Government to be devoted to the reception of cholera patients. Dr. Fleischmann, the physician of the hospital, expressed his willingness to receive cases of cholera, but stipulated that he should treat them according to the method he had most confidence in, viz. the homœopathic. Though homoeopathy was then under a ban in Vienna, his conditions were agreed to. Two allopathic physicians were appointed by Government as inspectors to report on the nature of the cases admitted into the hospital and the results of the treatment. The total number of cases received was 732, and of these 488 recovered and 244 died, a little more than 33 per cent. Sir William Wilde, an allopathic writer, in his work on Austria and its Institutions (p. 275), makes the following statement regarding this trial of the homœopathic treatment of cholera in Vienna:

Upon comparing the report of the treatment of cholera in this hospital with that of the same disease in the other hospitals in Vienna during the same period, it appeared that while two thirds of the cases treated by Dr. Fleisch

mann recovered, two thirds of those treated by the ordinary methods in the other hospitals died."

This immense superiority of the homœopathic over the ordinary treatment of cholera led the Government to remove the obstacles and repeal the ordinances that had hitherto prevented the free practice of homoeopathy in Austria, and gave a great impetus to the spread of Hahnemann's system throughout the empire.

On the appearance of the cholera in Edinburgh in 1848, the medical officers of the Homœopathic Dispensary of that town at once made arrangements for the treatment of the disease by homœopathic remedies. Placards were posted about the town announcing that medical aid could be had by sending to the dispensary where six medical men, viz. Drs. Russell, Wielobycki, Lyschinski, Sutherland, Atkin, and Cockburn arranged among themselves to be in readiness to go to the houses of those attacked at any hour of the day or night. This system they kept up during the whole prevalence of the epidemic. They treated in all 236 cases, of whom 57 died, showing a mortality of 24-15 per cent. The returns of the Board of Health show that there were 640 cases treated during the same period in Edinburgh and Leith otherwise than homœopathically, of whom 435 died, showing a mortality of nearly 68 per cent. (vide A Treatise of Epidemic Cholera by J. Rutherfurd Russell, M.D., p. 285).

This epidemic of cholera reached Liverpool in 1849, and the same measures were adopted by the medical officers of the Homœopathic Dispensary there to encounter the pestilence. Dr. Drysdale, Dr. Hilbers, Mr. Moore, and Mr. Stewart arranged among them to attend at the dispensary day and night in order to supply attendance and medicine to those needing them. Handbills were distributed far and wide containing plain directions for the treatment of the early stages of the disease, and small bottles of spirits of camphor (1 to 6) were given to all applicants. The total number of cases of fully-developed cholera treated by the medical officers of the dispensary was 175, of whom forty-five died, showing a mortality of 25.7 per cent. The

ཞ

general mortality from that epidemic of cholera in Liverpool, under all treatments, including the homœopathic, was, according to the returns of the Medical Officer of Health, 46 per cent. of those attacked (vide British Journal of Homœopathy, Vol. VIII, p. 92).

When the cholera epidemic visited London in 1854, the Board of Management of the London Homœopathic Hospital, then located in Golden Square, which happened to be the centre of the most severely affected part of the metropolis, cleared out the hospital for the reception of cholera patients only. The Medical Inspector appointed by the Board of Health, Dr. Macloughlin, was requested to put the London Homœopathic Hospital on the list of institutions for the treatment of cholera, which he was to inspect and report on. This he willingly did, after thoroughly inspecting the arrangements. He also paid a daily visit of inspection to the hospital during the whole of the time it was engaged in receiving cases of cholera. The Board of Health had appointed a committee of medical men, presided over by Dr. Paris, the President of the College of Physicians, to collect the reports of the treatment of cholera in London and to report to Parliament on the results of the various methods pursued in all the different institutions. When the report of this Treatment Committee appeared, it was observed that the returns of the London Homœopathic Hospital were altogether ignored. Some stir was made in the House of Commons by Lord R. Grosvenor-now Lord Ebury-about this omission, and this led to a separate Parliamentary paper being issued containing the omitted returns of the London Homœopathic Hospital. From these returns it appeared that the number of cases treated in the Homœopathic Hospital was sixty-one, of whom ten died, giving a mortality of 164 per cent. From the other Parliamentary paper, issued under the editorship of the Treatment Committee, it appeared that the average mortality under the mode of treatment pursued in the other metropolitan hospitals was 51.8 per cent.* The reason for

* This percentage agrees with what Lebert says concerning the mortality of cholera under the ordinary treatment: "In the distinctly pronounced form

the suppression of the returns from the Homœopathic Hospital by the Treatment Committee was therefore pretty obvious. It would have been decidedly awkward for an allopathic committee to have recorded that the despised homeopathists were able to cure 836 per cent. of the cases attacked, while the professors of scientific medicine could only manage to save 48.2 per cent., so they preferred rather to disobey the order of Parliament than to register their own inferiority.* The Government Inspector, Dr.

of cholera the average mortality rate may be put down as 50 per cent. of all cases attacked, with a tendency towards a higher rather than lower proportion" (Ziemssen's Cyclop., vol. i, p. 430).

*The report of the Treatment Committee is one of the most remarkable documents that were ever issued by a body of learned men. From it we learn in one place that the number of cholera patients treated in the metropolitan hospitals was 1100; in another the number is given as 1104. Here is some of the valuable information it gives us :

Of 1100 cases treated in the metropolitan hospitals:

Again:

643 had emetics, and of these 344 died=53-4 per cent.
457 had no emetics

1100

226

=49.4

570

Of 1100 cases treated in the metropolitan hospitals:

102 had turpentine enemata, and of these 59 died=57.8 per cent.
998 had no turpentine enemata

1100

511

=51.2

570

and as if this valuable information was not sufficient, we have it put in still another form, thus

Of 1100 cases treated in the metropolitan hospitals:

496 had iced water, and of these 248 died = 50 per cent.
604 had no iced water

1100

In another place we have an analysis of 1104 cases treated in the metropolitan hospitals, without a hint as to where the additional 4 came from, or any reason assigned for this omission in the other tables.

Of 1104 cases treated in metropolitan hospitals:

689 were treated by alteratives:

52 had small doses of calomel, of these 26 died 50 per cent.

=

Macloughlin, though himself belonging to the dominant sect, testified most handsomely to the severity of the cases treated in the London Homœopathic Hospital, and to the success of the treatment. He writes to Mr. Cameron, one of the medical officers of the hospital: "All I saw were true cases of cholera, in the various stages of the disease; and I saw several cases which did well under your treatment, which I have no hesitation in saying would have sunk under any other." An interesting account of this little episode illustrative of allopathic unfairness towards homœopathy will be found in our Vol. XIII, pp. 457, 594, and 674.

We could, from the records of homeopathy, adduce a

We learn from this table that of the 4 patients omitted from the other list 3 died. We are not responsible for the extraordinary percentages given above, they are of a piece with the slipshod incorrectness of the whole report. It is significant that the treatment by camphor and chloroform was followed by no deaths, but then there were only 3 cases so treated. We cannot wonder that the Treatment Committee objected to introduce the statistics of the London Homœopathic Hospital's cholera treatment, with its mortality of 164 per cent., among their 48 to 80 percentages of mortality from their own cherished methods.