We’ve got the cholera in camp-it’s worse than forty fights;
We’re dying in the wilderness the same as lsrulites;
It’s before us, an’ be’ind us, an’ we cannot get away.
An’ the doctor’s just reported we’ve ten more to-day!
Oh, strike your camp an’ go,-the bugle’s callin’
The Rains are fallin’
The dead are bushed an’ stoned to keep’ em safe below;
The Band’s a’ doing all she knows to cheer us :
The chaplain’s gone and prayed to Gawd to’ear us –
To’ ear us –
Lord for it’s a-killin’ of us so!” (KIPLING)
I PROMISED to tell you about the triumphs of Homoeopathy in Cholera.
But this, observe! Homoeopathy can not only cure-abort- prevent-give instant relief in acute sickness, even before it is possible to make a diagnosis – but in an unknown disease, never seen, but whose symptoms are known.
This is exactly what Hahnemann did in regard to cholera. He had never seen a case, but he knew its symptoms, and was able to prescribe its treatment. And his followers were ready for it, and treated it all over the world with unparalleled success.
In 1831 this “mysterious and murderous pest” was rushing on Europe from the East. Hahnemann started at once on the problem-how it was to be met, and wrote paper after paper, widely distributed, on its treatment. He had keen followers already in those days, not only all over Europe but all over the world.
His efforts met with much opposition. In one locality his paper was “forbidden to be sold by the censor”. No wonder he wrote bitterly, “They seem to prefer delivering all mankind to the gravedigger, to listening to the good counsel of the new purified medical art.”
CAMPHOR was his great remedy for cholera in its early stages. And cases of camphor poisoning display all the symptoms of early cholera. Hahnemann says Camphor should be given “alone and always at the very commencement of the disease, for it is only when given alone and at the first invasion of the disease, that it is so marvellously useful ”
Again, ” In the first stage camphor gives rapid relief, but the patients friends must themselves employ it, as this stage soon ends in death or in the second stage, which is more difficult to be cured, and not with camphor.
” In the first stage the patient must get us often as possible (at least five minutes) a drop of spirit of camphor (made with one ounce of camphor to twelve ounces of alcohol) on a lump of sugar, or in a teaspoonful of water. Spirit of camphor,” he says, ” can be rubbed into the skin of chest, arms and legs- can be given in a clyster;-or, should the patient’s jaws he closed by trismus, and he can swallow nothing, it can be made to evaporate on a hot iron, so that he may breathe in enough camphor.
” The quicker all this is done at the onset of the first stage of the disease, the more rapidly and certainly will the patient recover : often in a couple of hours, warmth, strength, consciousness, rest and sleep return, and he is saved.”
He says, ” I learn from authentic sources at Vienna, Berlin and Magdeburg, that the thousands of families, by following my instructions respecting the treatment by camphor, have cured, often in less than a quarter of an hour, those of their members who were attacked by the epidemic, and that so effectually that their neighbours knew nothing about it, and still less their medical attendants, who oppose with all their might this treatment so simple, so rapid, and so constantly certain in its effects.”
And in a note he tells us that ” there were cases of patients (for whom camphor had not been employed) who had apparently died in the first stage and were laid out for dead, in whom a finger was seen to move : in these some camphor spirit mixed with oil and introduced into the mouth, recalled the apparently dead to life.”
One remembers a gruesome picture in the Wirtz Museum in Brussels, where you where you look through a small aperture into a vault piled with rough coffins, marked ” mort de cholera”. From one of the lower ones projects the lean arm of a victim who, buried alive, had struggled in vain to escape from her weighted coffin.
In the later stage of clonic spasmodic character, with violent vomiting and purging, and with, especially, excessively painful cramps in calves, etc., “if camphor has not helped in fifteen minutes, then lose no time in administering the remedy for the second stage-Cuprum (copper), with should be given in potency every hour or half-hour, till vomiting and purging diminish, and warmth and rest are restored.”
He says that, to protect, a small dose of Cuprum can be given once a week. “But here the vapour of camphor must be avoided, as it suspends the action of copper.”
Workers in copper mines are said to exempt from cholera : and Hahnemann says that ” it had been found in Hungary that those who wore next to their skin a plate of copper, were exempt form infection.”
A yarn form an evening paper, some years ago, may serve to impress on your memories that copper protects and cures by virtue of its homoeopathicity to the symptoms of cholera (i.e. that their symptoms may be indistinguishable).
A certain Yankee skipper was met by his ship’s doctor with the unpleasant news that he had two cases of cholera of broad. The Captain slowly shook his head. ” I don’t have cholera on my ship. Take another look at those men.” The doctor went, and returned to again report, two cases of undoubted cholera. ” Look here, Doc., I don’t have cholera on my ship. See that those men have been eating.” This time enquiries revealed that those two only of all the crew had eaten of a pudding cooked in a copper pot, recently under repair, and not properly cleaned. ” Right,” said the skipper. ” And, remember! – I don’t have cholera on my ship!”
One wonders whether some of the sporadic cholera of India where a picnic party goes down en bloc, may not be caused by tea made in a dirty copper vessel. The natives use copper a great deal, one is told, for their cooking.
And here is an ancient tale-with a moral. An Arab was riding in the dusk into a certain city, when a hag by the roadside begged for a lift. He took her up behind him, and presently, as they parted, asked her name. She was Cholera. He was horrified : but she swore she would only kill ten men in that city. Three days later he again me her, and reproached her-hundreds had died.
” I killed ten men,” was her answer. ” Fear killed the rest.”
Hahnemann’s third great remedy-for the later stage-is Veratrum alb.
You may take it thus.
In early stages, where patient is cold-blue, collapsed, with sunken eyes, burning pains in stomach, muttering unconsciousness, get in your camphor, every five minutes, one drop on a small lump of sugar (if possible), as that is less nauseating than in water. Only stop when the patient is warm and restful. [* You can always make your camphor spirit yourself. Lumps of camphor are to be had everywhere. Put a small lump into a bottle of alcohol-whisky, brandy, or any spirit. A certain amount will dissolve in the spirit, to make; always, a “saturated solution”. Of this you can use a drop or two on a lump of sugar. BUT KEEP CAMPHOR BOTTLE AWAY FROM YOUR HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINES. It is a great antidote to most of them.*] In the later stages, of vomiting and purging, and especially in the cases with excessive painful cramps in calves, etc., give Cuprum, in potency, every hour or half-hour-till the patient is again warm and restful.
In the cases with excessive vomiting, excessive purging, and excessive cold sweat, the pictures is that of Veratrum alb. Give this as you would give Cuprum.
And with what result? Let history and statistics relate.
Cholera came first by way of Russia. The Russian Consul- General reported results form homoeopathic treatment in Russia in 1830-31. Of 70 cases treated in two places, all were cured. An of 1,270 cases, I,162 were cured and only 108 died. (The allopathic mortality in Russia was 60 to 70 per cent.) plus Bradford’s Logic of Figures, 1900.
Vienna. Homoeopathy had been “suppressed in Austria by Imperial Mandate,” but cholera altered all that. Dr. Wilde, an allopathic surgeon, editor of the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medicine, in his book on Austria, its Literary, Scientific and Medical treatment of cholera in the Homoeopathic Hospital at Vienna with that of the other hospitals at the same time, it appears that while two-thirds of those treated homoeopathically were cured, two-thirds of those treated by the other hospitals died. This extraordinary result let Count Kolowrat, Minister of the Interior, to repeal the law relative to the practice of Homoeopathy.” (” This homoeopathic hospital was daily visited by two allopathic physicians, Inspectors appointed by the Government, who confirmed this report.”)
The statistics from other countries all the world over give like astonishing results.
” A Dr. Perrussel, in the South of France, attended the poor villagers who have been suffering from sweating sickness and from cholera. His mortality under (homoeopathic) treatment was 5 to 7 per cent.; the allopathic mortality there was 90 per cent…. The half-brother of the Emperor of the French, Mons. de Morny, has just had an attack of cholera, and with God’s blessing recovered under homoeopathic treatment.” (Extract from a letter from a French (medical) correspondent. Brit. Journal of Homoeo., 1854. p. 686.)
