In Guatemala in 1854, a Baptist missionary was given ten days imprisonment by a coroner. His real offence was curing, by gratuitous administration of homoeopathic medicines, a large proportion of cholera patients, when the hospital treatment did not cure one. (Brit. Journal of Homoeo., 1854, p. 521.) When in 1854 cholera broke out violently in the neighbourhood of Golden Square (round out then London Homoeopathic Hospital) its wards were emptied of ordinary patients, [* With the exception of one case of Typhus, too ill to move, with recovered only to take cholera and die*]. and its 25 beds were devoted to the treatment of cholera and choleric diarrhoea.
The returns furnished give 61 cases of cholera, with 10 deaths and 330I.1 cases of choleric diarrhoea, with I death. [* While in the neighbouring hospital, the Middlesex, of the 231 cases of cholera treated, 123 died, a mortality of 53.2 per cent.*] In the British Journal of Homoeopathy, vol. XIII, complete details of our cases are to be found.
(” The aggregate statistics of results of allopathic treatment of cholera in Europe and America shoe a mortality of over 40 per cent.; statistics of homoeopathic treatment a mortality of less than 9 per cent.”) (Bradford’s Logic of Figures, p.137.)
Besides the patients treated in our London Hospital, “upwards of 1,200 bottles of camphor were distributed among the poor, who flocked in crowds to the Hospital for it…..”
Then something very disgraceful occured. Detailed returns had had to be made by all hospitals medical practitioners, as to treatment, and results to treatment, in cholera. When these were presented to Parliament, the homoeopathic statistics were found to be missing. They were demanded, and had to be produced.
The excuse for such suppression was conveyed in the “unanimous resolution of the Treatment Committee of the Medical Council of the General Board of Health,” explaining its reasons for passing over without notice the homoeopathic returns of their treatment of cholera.
” Resolved, that by introducing the returns of homoeopathic practitioners, they would not only compromise the value and utility of their average of cure, as deduced from the operation of known remedies, but they would give an unjustifiable sanction to an empirical practice alike opposed to the maintenance of truth, and to the progress of science.” (Brit. Journal of Homoeo., XIII, p. 460, April 21st, 1855.)
Meanwhile, Dr. Macloughlin, one of the medical inspectors of the Board of Health, wrote to Mr. Hugh Cameron, one of the surgeons of the London Homoeopathic Hospital (see Cholera, Parliamentary Paper, p.5): “…. You are aware that I went to your hospital prepossessed against the homoeopathic system; that you had in me, in your camp, an enemy rather than a friend…That there may be no misapprehension about the cases I saw in your hospital, I will add, that all I saw were true cases of cholera, in the various stages of the disease; and that I saw several cases which did well under your treatment which I have no hesitation in saying would have sunk under any other. ” In conclusion, I must repeat to you what I have already told you, and what I have told everyone with whom I have conversed, that although an allopath by principle, education and practice, yet was it the will of Providence of afflict me with cholera, and deprive me of the power of prescribing for myself, I would rather be in the hands of a homoeopathic than an allopathic than an allopathic adviser….You are at full liberty to make what use you please of this letter. (Brit. Journal of Homoeo., Vol. XIII(>)) But the most brilliant cholera work was done by Dr.Rubini in the Naples epidemic of 1854-55. With camphor alone he treated in the R.Alvergo dei Poveri (their workhouse infirmary) 225 cases of cholera without a single death, and 116 soldiers of the 3rd Swiss Regiment with the same success. ” Spirits of camphor,” in consequence, for many years-probably still-have borne his name.
Years ago, in Essex, walking the fearful smell of fields covered with first manure, we found a chemist’s shop and asked for a bottle of camphor. The price seemed excessive : ” You would get that for half the price from a homoeopathic chemist!” “Oh, yes,” said the chemist smugly, ” but, you see, there’s nothing in homoeopathic medicines.” He was made to unwrap his parcel, and its inscription was pointed out to him, “Prepared after the formula of Dr.Rubini.” ” I suppose you do not know who Dr. Rubini was?” He had no idea. “Well, he happens to have been a homoeopathic doctor, who did such marvellous work in a cholera epidemic in Italy that camphor bottles all over the world have borne his name ever since” and the chemist was duly squashed.
Hahnemann was in do doubt as to the nature of cholera. He sensed micro-organisms, even though in his day there were no microscopes that would prove their existence. He talks of stuffy, musty, vaporous places, such as the holds of ships, ” where the cholera miasm throve to an enormously increased swarm of these infinitely small, invisible organisms which are so murderously hostile to human life, and which most probably form the infectious matter of cholera”. And he urged precautions for isolation and disinfection. He was a great sanitarian.
And in regard to camphor, he says that “it makes an impression on the human body powerful, yet more transient than that of any other drug. Hence it needs very frequent repetition.”
And, besides being homoeopathic in its symptoms to cholera, Hahnemann says that “above all other drugs camphor possesses the power of speedily killing by its vapour the most minute animals of low order. consequently it will be able to kill most speedily and to annihilate the cholera miasm (which most probably consists of a murderous organism, undetected by our senses, which attaches itself to a man’s skin, hair, or to his clothing, and is thus transferred invisibly from man to man).”
There has been an idea that Camphor (perhaps because of the need for frequent repetition) was not homoeopathic to cholera; but that it was only proposed by Hahnemann for the treatment of cholera because of its destructiveness to micro-organisms-of which he speaks.
No greater mistake could be made. Camphor is absolutely homoeopathic to cholera in its first stage-for which Hahnemann alone prescribed it. Later on, if the patient survived, with the same Cuprum or Veratrum alb., according to symptoms, would now be homoeopathic, and therefore curative.
Let us contrast the symptoms of cholera in its first stage with those of camphor poisonings, and we shall see the absolute homoeopathicity of the drug.
CHOLERA SYMPTOMS- First stage.
Giddy faint powerlessness. Icy coldness of the body.
Strength suddenly sinks.
Expression altered.
Eyes sunk in hollow.
Face bluish and icy cold blue.
Closure of jaws, trismus.
Whole body cold. Extremities icy cold.
Hopeless discouragement and anxiety.
Dread of suffocation.
Half stupid and insensible.
Moans and cries in a low voice.
Burning in stomach and gullet.
Cramps in calves and other muscles.
On touching precordial region, he cries out.
CAMPHOR POISONING SYMPTOMS. Vertigo as if drunk. His senses leave him; he slides and falls the ground.
Icy coldness of body.
Great prostration and weakness. could hardly be held upright. attempted to stand, but lay down again.
Face pale, distorted, sunken.
Eyes staring, distorted, sunken
Face and hands deathly place-cold-
Closure of jaws, trismus.
Body quite cold. Skin cold.
Great anxiety.
Suffocative dyspnoea.
Falls down unconscious.
Cries out : mutters.
Burning in throat and stomach.
Violent cramps.
Precordial anxiety. When spoken to loudly complains of indefinable distress in precordial region.
No thirst, no sickness, no vomiting or purging (as in the later stage).
