In War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People, homeopath James John Garth Wilkinson 1812 – 1899 (photo from National Portrait Gallery), written in 1855, appeals to Benjamin Hall, the Minister for Health, to listen to the evidence for homeopathy and reject the vested interests of the orthodox medical profession (allopaths), thereby saving many thousands of lives and a great deal of the National Debt.

James John Garth Wilkinson asks: ‘Why do allopaths ignore arnica, aconite, rhus tox, calendula and symphytum when their healing effects are so well demonstrated? Why no scientific trials under homeopathic conditions?’

James John Garth Wilkinson demands: ‘Let the Blue Book of a Parliamentary Committee pit the grand drug houses and the market effects of narcotics consumed in our great hospitals, and open this debate up to public scrutiny. Call all the witnesses necessary and submit them to impartial evidence!’ ‘Why do the allopaths not take their own medicine?’

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 4 – 7

Discussing cholera, James John Garth Wilkinson explains that any stress on the population will affect the mortality of the disease, but that cholera would not kill so often if it were not for the dire effects of allopathic medications and techniques.

James John Garth Wilkinson advocates prevention, always better than cure, and points out that homeopathy triumphs where the allopaths fail. However, despite the statistics in favour of homeopathy from right across the World (allopathic mortality in the treatment of cholera = 39%, homeopathic mortality in the treatment of cholera = 9%), Benjamin Hall supports the wrong side and condemns thousands of innocents to death in the cholera epidemic sweeping Britain.

Despite the evidence of Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Fleischmann in Vienna in 1836, where Count Kolowrat, the Minister for the Interior, repealed Austrian law in favour of homeopathy, and that two allopaths who attended the epidemic, Mathias Roth and Johann Emanuel Veith, converted to homeopathy due to the evidence of their own eyes during this epidemic; and despite the work of Alexandre Charge in Marsellles in 1849, Benjamin Hall supports the wrong side and condemns thousands of innocents to death in the cholera epidemic sweeping Britain.

James John Garth Wilkinson asks why Benjamin Hall ignores the evidence?

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 8 -10

James John Garth Wilkinson asks why allopaths are so rigid and why they deny homeopathy without thought, in favour of their fossilised ideas which kill more often than they cure? Why also is the press (The Times, The Lancet and The Athenaeum) so closed to homeopathy, when they report daily on the cholera crisis, and print articles day after day on drainage, chloride of lime, castor oil, theories of fungal infection, sulphur treatments and piles of corpses, whilst they refuse to publish letters or articles about homeopathy, which do not get past their medical censor?

James John Garth Wilkinson asks why 1000s and 1000s of people are dead and the press is running around in a panic publishing anything they can find on the subject of cholera, that no mention whatsoever is made of homeopathy, which has such a proven track record in curing this disease?

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 10 – 26

James John Garth Wilkinson proceeds to demolish the allopathic arguments against homeopathy:

  • That similar medicines make the patient worse! Where is their evidence?
  • Homeopathy is inadequate! Where is their evidence when the statistics prove them so wrong?
  • Homeopathy’s success (they concede this then!) is simply due to Nature! Why then do untreated people die of cholera?
  • Homeopathy’s success (they concede this then!) is simply due to imagination (the old fashioned word for placebo)! Why then do babies and horses recover with homeopathy? By this objection, the allopaths admit that homeopathy has won in this area – their sweet smelling remedies clearly win out over the foul and noxious stink of allopathic medicines and poisons! No wonder the imagination of the sick has entirely deserted them! Allopathy simple cannot attend to psychology or address mental health problems!
  • Homeopathy uses poisons and homeopaths are ‘dangerous druggists’! Why then do allopaths use the same substances as the homeopaths, but administer them in lethal quantities? James John Garth Wilkinson challenges the allopaths – ‘I challenge them to bring forward one substance in Nature which will produce any poisonous effects in homeopathic dilution’!
  • Homeopathy’s success (they concede this then!) is simply due to diet alone! Homeopathy trusts patients’ instinct in diet and forbid only stimulants, and in this homeopathy and allopathy agrees, so what is their point?

So after a number of ‘exploded’ accusations, homeopathy can admit that it does make fair use of patient’s confidence in homeopathy, which has arisen due to previous acts of cure, and to homeopaths’ own sense of confidence in homeopathic remedies, based on successful experience.

  • That homeopathy maybe of use in chronic cases (they concede this then!) but it has no place in acute disease! Homeopathy is demonstrably effective in both acute and chronic disease. Homeopaths all over the World can demonstrate this quite effectively, and together with hygiene, good diet, clean water, optimism and mesmerism, homeopaths have an ‘abundant clientry’. All of the testimony is on the side of homeopathy, not on the side of allopathy from whom ‘there is nothing but an irrational growl of impossible and improbable’.
  • That homeopathy has not been investigated! This from allopaths who will not investigate a single case treated by homeopathy?
  • That homeopaths are men who could not succeed as allopaths! So how come so many successful allopaths have converted to homeopathy?
  • That homeopathy has added nothing to medical science! In fact Samuel Hahnemann has developed a whole new theory of medicine based on a central law.

Prior to Samuel Hahnemann, the allopaths had no drugs that were found by design, just by accident, or from the common people and from tradition. Since Samuel Hahnemann, our Materia Medicas are now full of leading drugs, each one detailed by its effects in every part of the human economy.

Also, thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, the symptoms of drugs are now matched to the symptoms of disease. Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, we know how to dilute drugs and how to unleash their healing power, so why do allopaths still overdrug in huge material doses?

Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, we now also know the mental and emotional effects of drugs and we can now treat psychological conditions. So Samuel Hahnemann has ‘evoked and trained disciplined legions of drugs to wage battle against the legions of disease’.

Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, we now know that allopaths are a ‘sullen and scattered tribe of untutored warriors’, and that homeopaths constitute a ‘mighty army’ whose ranks expand every year to the ‘greatest praise of all’. What other man has done so much for medicine?

Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, our Materia Medica has placed symptomatology upon an ‘entirely new basis’, in contrast, the allopaths’ Materia Medica is ‘somewhat abstract and scanty’.

Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, we can also add the patient’s own account of their illness, a ‘much longer story’ full of odd sensations and experiences and ‘very little listened to as yet’ by any allopath, who regard this information as ‘non essential’.

Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathy does listen to the patient’s information, because it wants this information to obtain ‘precise symptoms’ to lead them to precision in the choosing of medicines, therefore embracing the ‘true and particular chronicle of disease’, Is this not what the stethoscope has done for the heart and the lungs?

Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, we now have a ‘living history of disease’.

Thanks to Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathy actually seeks out new drugs of whom the allopaths previously knew nothing. Thus homeopathy is a progressive art and science. Homeopathy ‘holds what is has’ and ‘like a mighty oak ‘grows from its first growth ring to a vast girth’.

  • That homeopathy is an irregular practice! So where are the rules of allopathy? Why does the Government patronise one kind of medical education and destroy others? Why strangle competition?

Competition in modern Britiain is the ‘maintenance of entire liberty’ If all irregular practice is strangled, and we have abandoned this strange practice in religious observance and dissent, such that religious tolerance is now allowed, why now ‘rear the banner of medical absolutism’ or or ‘regular practice’?

Why this connection of medicine to the State when we have abandoned the connection of Church and State? Is Queen Victoria Defender of the Pharmacopoeia as she is Defender of the Faith? This should lead to revolution!

How is it that other branches of human activity flourish without such restrictions? Why is such a monopoly allowed? Whether it be granted to medical doctrines or to cotton merchants, such protectionism is fatal!

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 26 – 31

Where is our individual freedom? Do we protect an allopathic medical Guild as of old? Parliamentary privilege and monopoly is base protectionism! So much rising talent in Britain is suffocated by such ‘clever dishonesty’ and ‘privilege’ that bar men from their rightful callings.

Homeopaths use no violent means, no corrosive drugs, no health sapping mercurials or bleedings, so why protect those who do? What damages patients could claim against a lost week at work, or a lost year of their life because of the black draughts of the allopaths? What damages can be claimed for a child’s lost teeth rotted out by calomel? How many actionable and criminal causes would clog the courts?

When the law forbids allopathic doses and their disastrous effects, far worse than the arsenic Parliament has already banned from the hands of the public, why does our law not apply to allopathic mischief? Why does our law not apply to the numerous surgical procedures not warranted by true medical practice?

Why do allopaths ignore arnica, aconite, rhus tox, calendula and symphytum when their healing effects are so well demonstrated? Why no scientific trials under homeopathic conditions? Why not give the public a choice of medical systems? Let the public decide if they would rather have arnica and symphytum for a broken leg or leeches, liquor plumbi and bleeding? Would the public really choose bleeding, blistering, mercurialisation, purging and nauseation?

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 31 – 39

Let the Blue Book of a Parliamentary Committee pit the grand drug houses and the market effects of narcotics consumed in our great hospitals, and open this debate up to public scrutiny. Call all the witnesses necessary and submit them to impartial evidence! Why do the allopaths not take their own medicine?

How many children have died under their drugging? How many opium addicts have they created? How many alcoholics have they created? How many people have they poisoned? How many people have they enfeebled by bleeding?

Check the sick lists of the Benefit Societies and Clubs in cities against the evidence of the Clergy in rurual districts where allopaths are very few, and inquire about the longevity of the two populations! Ask the dentists in our large cities about the effects of allopathic drugging upon the teeth! Ask the Insurance Actuaries which medical system they prefer! Ask the public how they feel about allopathic drugging and bleeding!

Such a Parliamentary Committee would cause No Physic riots to rival the upsets of the Corn Laws, needing no Richard Cobden or John Bright to raise the masses. A new Anti Drug League would fly on the eloquence of its adherents such that some allopathic Prime Minister would apostatize. Like the Anti Slavery Bill, discussions would ensure whether to abolish allopathy immediately or gradually. Why is not every death which takes place under allopathic treatment subject to an inquest?

When will Parliament overhaul the allopathic morge?

Why does Parliament not listen to families in whose homes homeopathy has been practiced for years? Ask them how much homeopathy costs compared to the medical bills of allopaths?

Ask the patients and nurses about the distress of an allopathic ward compared to the calm of a homeopathic ward! Ask mothers about childbirth relieved by arnica and about the absence of puerpural fever!

Ask ship captains about the stink and furor that occurs when an epidemic breaks out on board with an allopath in attendance! Many of the Merchant Princes of London make sure they charter homeopathic ships due to the cleaner sanitary conditions and the absence of bleeding, purgatives, vomit, diarrhoea and the crying and moaning of the sick!

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 39 – 48

Thus a Parliamentary Board of Health (which did not exist in 1854!) would become a ‘compound doctor’ and really serve the public. The duty of a Board of Health would be to edify and educate medical practice on the best mode of practice, both for the medical profession and for the public. The duty of a Board of Health would be to exert a vital influence on the medical profession into a greater attention to curative results, and into a wholesome fear of the public as its Court of Last Appeal and its ultimate judge!

Already the Government has advised on cleanliness, on sewerage, on the provision of clean water, on the formation of public parks, on the control of waste, and the public have responded. This cleaning consciousness must now be matched by a healing consciousness!

Why do you allow the allopaths to be so secretive? Why is medicine shrouded in Greek and Latin and judged only by kill or cure? When will the allopaths come into the medical daylight with the public? Why are the eyes of the allopaths so little accustomed to the public sun?

Whu did so many soldiers die in the Crimea from the drenching rain on 14.9.1854, when rhus tox could have saved so many lives? What could the allopaths have offered them in such circumstances? Nothing! Why shut your eyes to such a simple solution without examining it?

Why are brave men dying in the Crimea for want of arnica? Why were arnica and rhus tox ignored due to the prejudice of allopaths when they have nothing to offer these shattered soldiers or to ease such a vast suffering?

James John Garth Wilkinson asks why Benjamin Hall has ignored homeopathy with all the terror of the Crimea, and the 12,000 deaths from cholera in the Heart of London? Did you not know of cuprum or of veratrum? Why publish reams on fungi and meteorology as a cause for cholera and then blindly ignore homeopathy? Cuprum and veratrum are prophylactic against cholera, and there is abundant evidence to this effect.

The first effect of your soon to be Board of Health is to kill fear. No one would be harmed by the ingestion of cuprum or of veratrum, and your ignoring of homeopathy is no longer tenable or forgivable. What have the allopaths got to offer the multitudes of terror stricken people during this dreadful epidemic? Such ignorance is costing the Country enormously in fear and a disabled economy because you choose to live in this ‘dense fog’ of prejudice.

You did this! You ought to have undone it! Do you really think you can kill the stench of death by chloride of lime?

Did you not know of camphor? Napoleon III knows of camphor, and has ordered a goodly supply of this from William Headland, enough to treat his entire army! Napoleon III knows that Marshal St. Arnaud owes his life to homeopathy, when in 1853 he was treated by Alexandre Charge in Marseilles.

James John Garth Wilkinson asks Benjamin Hall why he did not order camphor for the army and for the public, to be given as soon as any diarrhoea occurs, 30 drops of saturated spirit of camphor in half a tumbler of water to be taken every 5 minutes to half an hour, depending on the severity of the symptoms? Why no advice to abstain from food and rest until the doctor arrives?

If the diarrhoea increases, take 20 drops of veratrum in half a tumbler of water, and 20 drops of arsenicum in half a tumbler of water, alternating every half hour. Add to this 20 grains of cuprum 3x if cramps and convulsions occur, to be taken when the pains are greatest. If the patient still worsens, then give carbo veg 3x tincture, or in extremis stramonium tincture 3x.

Have you even tried these remedies? The homeopaths have tried them, which is why our mortality rates in cholera are only 9%, compared to the allopaths mortality rate of 39%!

These statistics are repeated across Europe, so why have you not investigated this? It is not the job of a Board of Health to protect vested interests when so many corpses lie dead upon the ground!

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 48 -54

James John Garth Wilkinson asks Benjamin Hall why, if he supports compulsory vaccination, why then do you not support compulsory prophylaxis? The public are educating themselves and adopting homeopathy, leaving you behind with distaste, as you protect your friends and abandon them! You are quick to tax them, leaving no stone unturned to ‘horse leech’ the public, so why will you do nothing to protect them?

Why did you do nothing to protect our brave soldiers in the Crimea? Why do our soldiers not carry nux vomica to protect them from the terrible seasickness they suffered? Why did our soldiers not carry ipecac, cocculus, tabacum or petroleum? Why did the allopaths blister their stomachs in such cases?

Why did our soldiers not carry bryonia or rhus tox to counter the fevers in Varna? The Duke of Cambridge and Napoleon III could have told you of the benefits of homeopathy in such circumstances, but you would not listen!

How much has your prejudice cost our Country? How much have you paid the allopaths to shrug their shoulders and offer nothing except purgatives, bleeding, blistering, amputations and death? ‘Allopathy, art thou a dumb dog when thy counsel is needed?’

Why did our soldiers not carry arnica as they marched from Balaklava to Sepastopol? 12,000 dead men lie on the field due to ignorance and disease not due to fighting. What say you of this?

Why did you deny them homeopathy when the allopaths could offer our brave soldiers nothing? Why do you protect allopaths who do nothing and have nothing to offer?

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 54 -64

James John Garth Wilkinson informs Benjamin Hall that women are the pillar of homeopathy. They first witnessed the horrors of allopathy in the nursery and converted immediately. It is women that will emancipate the public from the slavery of allopathy. Homeopathy readily acknowledges that women represent one half of the new medicine. Note her ‘ever busy love’, her observation of symptoms and bodily states, her intuition and her fine senses. Homeopathy opens itself to women, as did Samuel Hahnemann, we champion the emancipation of women in medicine.

The ‘appearance of women upon the World stage as a healer belongs to the present hour, and in its breadth was impossible before homeopathy came’. Why does allopathy shut her out?

Women have always followed soldiers into the field of war, and tended to their wounds and wants. Why should they not be educated in medicine and in homeopathy to continue the work they have always done since wars began in human history? Why do allopaths fear them so when they cannot minister to so many thousands of injured men without them?

American leads the way with Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell (the later James John Garth Wilkinson met in America and was very impressed by her). Why no female doctors in Britain? Women must be allowed to head their own departments in hospital, and nurses must be allowed to progress in the profession.

The prejudice against women and homeopaths cripples medicine in Britain, and the prejudice of allopathy condemns many to a cruel death. Florence Nightingale proves this point, and she is the representative of a vast number of women who speed to this field of war. Why do you not ‘unchain the feet of woman’ and ‘cast away her Chinese shoes’?

Why is it that citizens of Britain can adopt homeopathy and suffer no censure beyond the usual ridicule of orthodoxy? Are not soldiers citizens too? Why are they then subject to censure by allopaths and threatened with Court Martial for practicing homeopathy? Why are they singled out for such vengence?

Why should allopathy ‘pour its stuff down unwilling throats’? Why religious freedom by no medical freedom?

James John Garth Wilkinson advises Benjamin Hall that the newspapers have just published a list of medical stores shipped recently to the Crimea. Alongside the blistering plasters, calomel, jalap, castor oil, opium, colycynth, Dover Powder, laudanum, rhubarb, cupping instruments, lancets, blood pourers and Blue Pills, he noted 5lbs 2ox of arnica, the first of two deliveries bound for Scutari!

Why no veratrum, Cuprum, dulcamara, calendula, symphytum? Why poison our troops? Are you in the pay of the Russians? A ‘drum head Court Martial would make short work of you!’

At least chloroform is on the list of medical stores! This last will save a great many from the nervous shock the knife gives to flesh, blood and bone! How much 2-3 chests of homeopathic remedies would serve our army! Just think how light the portability and transport and reduced baggage train! If all soldiers also had private homeopathic remedy chests, so much cheaper than allopathic medicines, reducing the costs of military expeditions and enabling the injured to treat themselves, thus reducing the demand on military surgeons and physics, the ‘financial benefits would be preponderant to a degree almost beyond calculation’.

12,000 dead and 18,000 wounded under allopathy is vastly expensive in terms of men and economics. Think of our National Debt!

Remember that Pennsylvania, Ohio, Bavaria, Baden, Austria, Berlin, Moscow, France and Hungary have already authorised professorships in homeopathy, and adpated hospitals to accommodate homeopathy.

Remember what lemon juice did for scurvy and the Navies of the World. Think for a moment what homeopathy could do for the Armies of the World!

War, Cholera, and the Ministry of Health. An appeal to Sir Benjamin Hall and the British People pages 65 –

James John Garth Wilkinson asks Benjamin Hall to remember the families of Britain, and he reminds him that as Minister for Health he is responsible for them all. Ask your allopaths what they do for the poor, for the ordinary citizen? James John Garth Wilkinson asks Benjamin Hall what can you do for them?

What know you of ignatia? Homeopathy can treat the sorrows and worries of the Country. Remember for a moment what does happen when allopathy adopts one homeopathic idea, that of vaccination.

What know you of chamomilla? Homeopathy can treat the cross tempers of the nursery when allopaths drug our children with opium.

Why do allopaths not know that drugs affect the mind? Why do allopaths not know that the mind affects the body? Why do they assert that sorrow ‘does the soul good’? Why does The Times claim that ‘the horrid smart of the surgeon’s knife is a a proper stimulus to a wounded man’?

If we hold with the closed minds of allopaths across the board, would we have electricity, railroads, telegraphs, steamships, steam printing and a hundred other new things?

Science advances on new principles. Why is allopathy so resistant to new ideas, with the single exception of chloroform? Why do they have no principles of practice? No Law of Medicine? No consensus of practice?

Homeopathy has one simple principle SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR. This opens the whole of medicine to new discoveries, makes ever new conquests, in epidemics, in trauma, in venery, in psychology, in acute and chronic diseases.

Homeopathy does not destroy the body or the mind to effect its cures. Homeopathy does not poison the patient to effect its cures. Homeopathy does not bleed the patient.

Moreover, homeopathy is loved, where allopathy is hated. Homeopathy is sweet where allopathy tastes and smells foul. Homeopathy is rapid in its cures, whereas allopathy causes more disease. Homeopathy eases mind and body, whereas allopathy spreads fear and dread.

Your association with allopathy dirties your Board of Cleanliness as fast as you clean. If you investigate homeopathy, you will find cleanliness, light and hope from ‘teething to toothlesness’. Homeopathy can treat mewling and pewking in the nursery, we can also treat teething, childhood illnesses and fevers, growing pains, menarche, the psychology of adolescence, childbirth, menopause, constipation, confusion and any number of human ailments. The allopaths have nothing for domestic medicine, and at best it is cruel. At worst is is toxic, dangerous and addictive.

The allopaths have no answer to this. Homeopathy can and does answer all these ills. What will your Board of Health recommend? More house to house visitations to spread allopathic poisons and addictive substances, filling the graveyards, prisons, workhouses and opium dens, damaging the economy, mind and spirit of our Country? Why do you serve disease and damage the moral state of our people?

Will you treat rickets with calc carb? Will you pay attention to the statistics that prove the efficacy of homeopathy? Why do you not listen to the simple folk who tell you of their herbs and simples and of the cures of ‘good old women’ and ‘good old men’?

Medicine has her birthplace in these ‘unsophisticated abodes’ and proud pharma is ‘nothing but the tangled and matted tops of which herbs and simples are the roots’. Why do the allopaths scorn the wisdom of ancient populations? Why will you not enter a new World of medicinal substances and lay the basis of a new physic?