As regards the measures to be adopted by individuals to ward off cholera, they must consist mainly in the avoidance of those things which have been specified as predisposing causes of the disease.
Excesses of all kinds are to be avoided excesses of abstinence as well as of use.
The very free use of vegetable food, especially of the coarser kinds.
Indulgence in alcoholic drinks.
Exposure to night air; to cold; to undue fatigue of any kind; to mental depression.
But it would be unwise to make, during the prevalence of an epidemic, sudden and violent changes in habits, which, though bad, are nevertheless long- established habits. “It is not safe to trade horses when crossing a stream.”
IV.
If, in spite of the measures by which we had hoped to ward it off, cholera come among us as an epidemic, we shall find it to out advantage to have well considered beforehand, and determined, how we may best deal with it. This is a question for each individual to settle for himself, since the responsibility is his.
The obvious answer, as indicating the wisest course, would be: “I will seek medical advice.” But it is all important to know what are the earliest signs that medical advice is needed.
Dr. Guerin, in his elaborate report on cholera to the French Academy, lays great stress on the “fact” that almost every case of decided cholera is preceded by, what he calls, a “curable stage:” a period during which the patient suffers from a diarrhoea, or some other derangement of the digestive organs. This may last even for a week or ten days. It is often, apparently, so slight a deviation from health that, in ordinary times, one would think it hardly necessary to consult a physician or take remedies for it. But an experienced physician would at once recognize it as a choleraic diarrhoea as, in fact, cholera in the preliminary, or, as Guerin calls it, the “curable stage.” The patient should place himself under medical treatment as early as possible in this stage. This stage cannot be so described as to enable a non-medical person to distinguish it with certainty from a common diarrhoea. Nor is it possible to give such directions for its treatment as would be proper for a large part of the community, without modification to suit the constitutional peculiarities of each individual.
If “one man’s meat is another man’s poison,” so, much more frequently, is his medicine. No faith should, therefore, be placed in remedies or nostrums that are offered as “sure cures” for everybody, in every stage of cholera, etc. Each patient requires a treatment especially adapted to his particular constitution, and to his actual condition.
Many persons are so fortunate as to have a medical adviser who commands their entire confidence; who has attended them through dangerous illness, has studied and appreciated their constitutional peculiarities and tendencies, and to whose care they would, under any emergency, unhesitatingly intrust their lives. To such persons no better advice can be given than this: “Consult your physician; be advised by him how to guard against cholera, how to meet its first advances, and then, resolving to follow his counsels implicitly, go about your business with an easy mind.” But many are not thus happily situated. They have no trusted medical adviser. Even now, in anticipation of the coming of cholera, they are anxiously looking for the soundest medical counsel, and for that system of medical treatment which offers, in its statistics, the strongest guarantees of successes. For intelligent members of the community well know that there are radical differences in the views of medical men as regards the proper and the most successful treatment of cholera as well as of all other diseases.
It were a foolish affection to ignore these differences. For the information, therefore, of those whose minds are not settled, but who are in quest of facts on the subject of these differences in modes of medical treatment, I will give in this section a summary of the statistics of the treatment of cholera under the two principal antagonistic systems of medicine.
As might naturally be supposed, and for obvious reasons, the mortality of patients treated in hospitals is always much greater than that of patients treated at their own houses.
From 1831 to 1848 the mortality of cholera patients treated by the ordinary, “regular,” or allopathic treatment at their own houses, throughout Europe, was one in two and a half cases, or more than 39 per cent. In hospital practice, during the same period, and under the same method, the mortality was one in one and a half cases, or more than 57 per cent.
During the same period the mortality of patients treated at their own houses, by homoeopathic physicians, was one death in eleven cases, or a little more than 9 per cent.
In homoeopathic hospitals, the mortality was one in three and one-twelfth cases, or a little more than 33 per cent.
In the city of New-York in 1832, the mortality under allopathic practice was: in hospitals, 50 per cent.; in private practice, 33 per cent.
In 1849 the mortality under allopathic practice was: in hospitals, 53.7 per cent.; in private practice, 34.7 per cent.
During this epidemic in New-York, the aggregate mortality under homoeopathic treatment under many disadvantages, was 15 per cent.
Summing up the whole number of patients hitherto reported as treated homoeopathically, in Europe and America, both in private and in hospital practice, we find a mortality of 9 per cent., while the most favorable statement of mortality under allopathic treatment is 32 per cent.
But these reports of the results of homoeopathic treatment have, although most unjustly, been called in question. It is proper to authenticate them by citing the action of government officials, who are not interested in the disputes of physicians, and by quoting the words of distinguished medical men who are not homoeopathists.
Dr. Gerstel, of Vienna, and Dr. F. F. Quin, now a venerable and distinguished practitioner in London, treated cholera in Tischnowitz, Moravia, in 1831. At the close of the epidemic, a report was made to the Austrian Government by the inspector. It concludes as follows:
“The proportion of deaths, compared with other places in which the epidemic raged, was small. The homoeopathic treatment, which was carried out to a great extent by Dr. Gerstel, was the cause of this favorable result. (Signed). DR. VICTOR MEKARSKY VON MERK, “K. K. Inspector.”
In 1836 cholera visited Vienna a second time. The practice of Homoeopathy was at that time forbidden in Austria, but permission was obtained to open a Homoeopathic Cholera Hospital. I state the result in the words of Mr. Wilde, of Dublin, the distinguished aural and ophthalmic surgeon, who is no friend to Homoeopathy. He says: (1 1Austria and its Institutions, p.275.)
“Upon comparing the report made (by the government inspector, who visited the hospital daily) of the treatment of cholera in his hospital with that of the same epidemic in the other hospitals of Vienna at a similar time, it appeared that while two-thirds of those treated by Dr. Fleischmann (homoeopathic) recovered, two-thirds of those treated by the ordinary methods, in other hospitals, died. This very extraordinary result led Count Kolowrat, Minister of the Interior, to repeal the law relative to the practice of Homoeopathy.”
Thus the very fact that the practice of Homoeopathy has been sanctioned by law in Austria since 1836, is an eternal monument and testimony to the superior success of the homoeopathic treatment of cholera.
In Paris, in 1848-50, Dr. Tessier, in the Hospital St. Marguerite (Hotel Dieu, annexe), treated cholera patients in his wards homoeopathically. The general report, made, not by Tessier, but by allopathists, gives for his wards a mortality from cholera of 341/2 per cent., while in the other wards and hospitals the mortality was 57 per cent.
In 1854, in Great Britain, Government established a Medical Council to gather returns of the treatment and mortality of cholera under every method, and to report to Parliament.
When the report was submitted to the House of Commons, it was noticed that the returns of the homoeopathic practitioners and of the London Homoeopathic Hospital were not included in it. The House of Commons thereupon called for these rejected returns, and they were presented in a separate report, entitled “Return to an Address of Hon. House of Commons, dated May 17, 1855; for copies of any letters; together with copies of any returns that have been rejected by the Medical Council.”
This return gives the statistics of the London Homoeopathic Hospital, attested by Dr. McLaughlin, an eminent allopathic physician, who was government inspector of cholera hospitals, by appointment of the same medical council which rejected the returns!
The mortality of cholera in the Homoeopathic Hospital was 16.4 per cent.
Under allopathic treatment, during the same epidemic, the Medical Council’s return to Parliament gives the mortality as 59.2 per cent.
Dr. Dunham graduated from Columbia University with Honours in 1847. In 1850 he received M.D. degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York. While in Dublin, he received a dissecting wound that nearly killed him, but with the aid of homoeopathy he cured himself with Lachesis. He visited various homoeopathic hospitals in Europe and then went to Munster where he stayed with Dr. Boenninghausen and studied the methods of that great master. His works include 'Lectures on Materia Medica' and 'Homoeopathy - Science of Therapeutics'.