HOMOEOPATHY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 219, 18 September 1867, Page 2

HOMOEOPATHY.

To the Editor op the Nelson Evening Mail,

Sir — I had not intended trespassing on your space again, but so characteristic a sample of the current literature by which homoeopathy is promoted has j ust come in my way, that I am tempted to ask you to copy it: —

'During the year 1853, in the Mississippi State Hospital, while under allopathic treatment the mortality was about 55 per cent., about 33 per cent, of these from yellow fever. It having been reported thatat a private homoeopathic hospital at the same place the mortality from yellow fever was only 6 per cent., the State instituted an inquiry, after which the charge of the late hospital was given to the homoeopathic, which they have since retained. Under homoeopathic treatment the mortality in 1854 was under 8 per cent., in 1855 under 14 per cent.; the mortality from yellow fever during these two years was under 5 per cent.'

That your readers may not think I have ransacked some dirty bookshelf for so choice a specimen, I must assure them that it appeared under the heading ' Homoeopathy in Victoria* in the Nelson Examiner of September 14th, 1867, where it is gravely stated that it is a gleaning from the memoranda now being brought forward in favor of establishing a public dispensary in Melbourne.

These are but sham statistics, for they omit the number of patients, the names of the diseases, and every particular necessary for exactness.

I know homceopathists have a hospital in Manchester — for I have had the privilege of reading some of prescriptions written there — and I presume they have them in London and Liverpool, why do they not give statistics for 1865 or 1866 from England, where nothing that is not genuine can stand the scrutiny of common sense?

If the homoeopathy of 1867 is compelled to republish what took place in the land of Barnum in 1853 I was not far from the truth when I said it was nearly extinct. I am, etc., S. A. C. Nelson, Sept. 16, 1867.