Cuprum has been recommended by Hahnemann in cholera, as you have seen from the extract I quoted to you at the beginning of my first lecture. Since then not only clinical experience has fully confirmed the correctness of his recommendation, but Nature herself, stood up, as it were, to bear witness to the grand truth of Homoeopathy. It has been observed at various Epidemic in Europe and in America that copper miners, or workers in copper are never affected by cholera. Even people who wear a light copper belt, or a copper coin near their skin, are said to escape cholera. Dr. Hoyne in his `Clinical Therapeutics’ says : Dr. Burq (*From Dr.Burq’s metalloscopic experiments regarding restoration of sensibility in cutaneous regions rendered anaesthetic by long standing diseases, it is to be seen that, when small metallic plates are allowed to remain in contact for a few minutes with the skin of patient s who have lost for years all cutaneous sensibility, then the patients acquire their lost local sensibility, at the place of the metallic contact; while there is at the same time a visible increase of flow of blood to the parts, and the tissues regain their elasticity and tension. There are two things to be noticed in connexion with the above phenomenon. The change is only temporary, lasting but few minutes after the removal of the metallic plate; and secondly that, according to the individuality of the patient, plates of different metal have to be applied; that is to say, there is in the case of each patient a certain metal which will produce the phenomenon, and no other. The correctness of the above experiments and their respective results have been confirmed by a Medical Commission of Enquiry, established for the purpose in Paris. (Heinigke’s Arzneimittellehre, p. 72.)
While these sheets go through the press, the Paris correspodent of the Indian Daily New (October 3rd 1883) gives us the following item of news:
Dr. Burq. who ever since 1852 has recognised copper as a specific against cholera, read a paper with a remarkable amount of evidence in support of his theory to the Academy of Medicine on September 4th, and it was favourably received. In 1852 Professor Hus, of Stockholm, wrote to him :-
In Fahlers where there are the largest copper workers in Sweden, cholera never was seen.
In 1865 Dr. Gallarini, of Florence, affirmed that, in that town which contains 32 establishments where there are workers in copper, no case of cholera occurred either in 1836 or 1854. At the same period, Dr. Rogalis made confirmatory observations at Naples and Palermo. In the Rue Catalana, vary filthy street in Naples, but where copper is either worked or stored in almost every house, no case of cholera occurred during the epidemic of 1855, although the disease was raging all around.
An officer of rank in the Turkish Army named Tadesco observed that in factories where copper saucepans and kettles were made there was no cholera.
During the two great cholera periods in Egypt-1850 and 1865- the Arab quarter of Cairo, where copper utensils are manufactured, was free form the scourge. That is an incontestable fact.
At the meeting of the Academy of Science, October 30th, 1865, Dr. Velpeau read a communication from M. Casiano del Prado, Government Engineer in Spain, from which it appeared that a numerous population on the banks of the Rio Tinto was entirely spread, although there was much cholera of a violent kind in the neighbourhood. A French Engineer, M. Roswag, who for fourteen years, was attached to the mines near the Rio Tinto, certified that the copper miners, more than 30,000 in number, enjoyed complete exemption from the disease.
A practioner from San Francisco, lately on a visit to Paris, told Dr. Burq that a hot spring in Southern California, 50 miles from Angeleso, strongly impregnated with copper, was reputed far and wide to be sovereign remedy against cholera.
Professor Dr. Nussbaum, the celebrated German authority upon hygienic matters, has expressed himself as to the innocuousness of the cholera bacillus as follows : Since Koch discovered the cholera comma bacillus it has come to be known that no human being living at the place where the epidemic rages escapes this poisonous fungus, for it is in the air we inhale, in th water we drink, upon the food which we eat; it is in the soil, and when this is moist and unclean, multiplies with extraordinary rapidity. In spite of this fact, in a city of say two hundred thousand persons, visited by cholera, perhaps but 1 per cent., that is two thousand, will be attacked. The other one hundred and eighty thousand persons remained unimpaired in health, although they have all inhaled, swallowed, and drunk the cholera bacillus. It is now known with certainty that the cholera bacillus is dangerous only to those persons whose stomach is not in healthy state, and jeopardises life only when it passes into the intestines. A healthy stomach will digest the bacillus, and therefore it does not reach the intestines in a living state.*) ascertained by numerous experiments made in the hospitals, that the application of copper rings on the limbs is a certain means of causing the cramps in cholera patients to cease immediately, and often all the other symptoms vanish at the same time.
While lately in Vienna (Austria) I tried to ascertain in how far workers in the arsenic mines of Styria or the workers of the furnaces in Silicea have been known to be exempt from cholera. I was told by men whom I have reason to consider reliable, that the men as a rule could not stand the action of the Arsenical fumes, unless they habitually take arsenic internally; they become by sheer necessity Arsenic eaters. As such they are known to be exempt from all sorts of infectious diseases, cholera included. To what degree they are exempt from infections disease in general and cholera in particular, I had not the opportunity of ascertaining. If we hear then so little about the prophylactic power of Arsenic against cholera, it may either be, because the drug is not so perfect a protector as is the case with Cuprum; or because it is so general a protector against all infections disease, that no particular notice has been taken of cholera.
There is a common saying to the effect that prevention is better than cure; and Cuprum and its undisputed prophylactic virtues against cholera, present us with a striking illustration of the truth of the above adage. Cuprum is certainly no specific cholera remedy in the strict sense of the word; yet as a prophylactic it is efficient in its action to ward off the morbid invasion. May be, there are some hidden virtues in the copper metal which our physiological provings have hitherto failed to bring to light; may be, that Cuprum has some specific physical or physiological action upon the condition under which cholera, and indeed, some other epidemic diseases are generated, spread and are allowed to take effect upon men, whereby it becomes endowed with preventive virtues(*If there is any truth in Koch’s Cholera Bacillus-a truth strictly denied by Dr. Klien-then Cuprum may have some further claim as a cholera prophylactic, known as it is that sulphate of copper is next to corrosive sublimate, the best disinfectant. I would strongly advise practitioners to try Cuprum Sulphuricum in all cases where Cuprum Metallicum or Acetate should act unsatisfactorily; to try moreover low dilutions of the drug (Cuprum Sulph.) any 2x or 3x where higher dilutions fail to fulfil our expectations.*) In fact I have heard that during the last out-break of typhoid fever in Paris, workers in copper have shown an immunity from the disease, that has drawn the attention of the sanitary authorities on the subject. Whatever the case may however be, it appears that, as far as out present knowledge of specific prophylactic agents goes, they stand more or less in homoeopathic relation to the disorder respecting which they are capable of exercising prophylactic virtues. There are no doubt cases, and whole outbreaks of typhoid fever which show strong similarity to Cuprum poisoning. Says Dr. Fothergil: Cuprum like Arsenic, has a specific destructive affinity to the tissues constituting the alimentary canal; it causes enormous vomiting, profuse discharges of bile upwards and downwards, inflammations and erosions of both stomach and bowels, delirium, convulsions, syncope and death. This refers to cases of poisoning by water from a spring impregnated with verdigris (Acetate of Copper). As to the chronic poisonous effects of the metal itself, Heinigke says: There are persons who are unaffected by th action of small quantities of metallic copper. Most persons, however, show the following symptoms after having been for a long time exposed to its action : metallic taste, greenish coloration of the hair; digestive disorders; nausea and vomiting; colic and diarrhoea; convulsions, paralysis and slow fever; the gums recede, and show a purple margin. In Allen’s Encyclopaedia of Pure Materia Medica you will find many cases of poisoning, with symptoms like the following : febrile heat for several days : fever (many cases); continuous fever, almost typhus; hectic fever; etc. Cuprum has been actually recommended, as far back as 1866, as a remedy in typhoid fever, on homoeopathic principle, by Dr. Baehr in his Science of Therapeutics. He says : Of the capacity of Cuprum to produce typhus symptoms in their whole succession, we have the testimony of no less an authority than Frerich. (See Frank’s Archives. Vol. IV). The copper-typhus is not distinguished by violent fever, but from the very onset of the fever there is extraordinary weakness, and the same increases under symptoms of blood-decomposition (nose-bleeding, petechiae) so rapidly, that death occurs in a comparatively short time under symptoms of general paralysis. From the Cyclopaedia of Drug Pathogenesy, article Cuprum, it may be seen that such typhus symptoms of Cuprum poisoning are often unpreceded by any gastric symptoms. Patients would be well for a few days when they gradually lose strength, and merge gradually into a state as described above. The prophylactic virtue of copper in some typhus epidemics is, therefore, one proof more, of the existence of some homoeopathic relation between the physiological action of the prophylactic agent and the disease to which it refers; although it is by no means sure, that such a relation may be all that is required to confer upon a drug prophylactic virtues.
