Cuprum Aceticum

(Reprinted from The Homoeopathic World)

Sir,

As I visited Gloucester during the late epidemic of small-pox in the Southern half of the city, and took great interest in the methods of treatment pursued there, your readers may like to learn (in the absence of a resident homoeopathic medical man in that city) the impressions left upon the mind of an amateur with some slight knowledge of Hahnemann's law.

The fatalities under different treatments varied greatly, as the following approximate list will show :

In Isolation Hospital during the first regime ……. 54 per cent.

In isolation Hospital under Dr. Brooke ….. 8 per cent.

With Hydropathy, under Mr. Pickering …. 10 per cent.

With Crimson Cross ointment under Captain Feilden…. 2 per cent.

I found during my visits that a great and growing confidence had superseded scepticism in regard to the Crimson Cross ointment, which the above rough gauge of results justifies.

Feeling sure that if there were any curative effects in the ointment they must be due to our law, I asked Captain Feilden if he would tell me what the ingredients of his ointment were. He readily complied, and I found that the green paint-like unguent, which was smeared over his patients from head to foot, owed its remedial powers to Acetate of Copper.

On learning last Monday from Dr. Hadwen the approximate results given above, it was evident that it was desirable to compare the symptoms of small-pox with the provings of Cuprum acet. The following are the results :

The above symptoms and provings correspond too closely for the similitude to be altogether fortuitous ; and the startling success of the Crimson Cross ointment points to its being a fresh illustration of the law, similia similibus curentur.

The homoeopathic branch of the profession have lost a great chance by not unanimously declaring the irrelevancy of vaccination to small-pox ; it may be that, to make up for this lost chance, in Cuprum aceticum they have a remedy for variola which may rank with Aconite in fever, or with Camphor in the early stages of cholera.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

A. PHELPS.

Edgbaston, September 11th, 1896.