Hugh Cameron 1810 - 1897

Hugh Cameron 1810 - 1897 (photo used courtesy  of Homéopathe International) MRCS Edinburgh was a British orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become a student of Samuel Hahnemann in Paris, and an active member of the British Homeopathic Society and he wrote articles for the The Journal of the British Homeopathic Society in 1845 and _1863_.

Hugh Cameron was a medical officer at the St. James Homeopathic Dispensary opened in 1842 at 8 King Street with Frederick Hervey Foster Quin and Samuel Thomas Partridge, and House Surgeon at the London Homeopathic Hospital, and a major Sponsor of the Homeopathic Convalescent Home in Eastbourne,

Hugh Cameron was the homeopathic practitioner of Henry William Paget Marquis of Anglesea, and he was also the homeopathic practitioner of William Warren Vernon (_Recollections of Seventy-Two Years.__ _William Warren Vernon. BiblioBazaar, 2009), and a friend of Charles Locock 1st Baronet,

Hugh Cameron was active in the foundation of the London Homeopathic Hospital, which was established at 32 Golden Square in 1851. He was a was a colleague of Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, the first President of the British Homeopathic Society, and Marmaduke Blake Sampson, the Chairman of the British Homeopathic Association, and many other homeopaths.

Hugh Cameron MRCSE FRS is listed in The British and Foreign Homeopathic Medical Directory and Record as the Resident Physician to Henry William Paget Marquis of Anglesea in 1853. Hugh Cameron was the private physician of Henry William Paget Marquis of Anglesea, and he had travelled to Paris to study under Hahnemann at the insistence of Henry William Paget Marquis of Anglesea. Hugh Cameron had subsequently lived with Henry William Paget Marquis of Anglesea for over 20 years. Hugh Cameron was known to tell humerous anecdotes about Henry William Paget Marquis of Anglesea, and the amputated limbs of his family and the games they played on the unwary.

When Henry William Paget Marquis of Anglesea died in 1854, Hugh Cameron became the House Surgeon at the London Homeopathic Hospital, just as the Cholera outbreak began, and working alongside Edward Hamilton, Hugh Cameron and the hospital staff turned the London Homeopathic Hospital over to the victims of cholera.

Hugh Cameron was a colleague of John James Drysdale, Victor Massol, J Chapman, Matthew James Chapman, Edward Charles Chepmell, Paul Francois Curie, Harris F Dunsford, Edward Hamilton, Joseph Kidd, Thomas Robinson Leadam, J Bell Metcalfe, Victor Massol, Henry Reynolds, John Rutherford Russell, David Wilson, Stephen Yeldhamand many others.

In 1858 a Festival in aid of the London Homeopathic Hospital was held with many Aristocratic and minor gentry patrons attending, alongside Dr. Ayerst, William Bayes, Edward Charles Chepmell, William Vallancy Drury, George Napoleon Epps, Arthur Guinness, Edward Hamilton, Frantz Hartmann, Amos Henriques, Joseph Kidd, Thomas Robinson Leadam, J Bell Metcalfe, Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, Henry Reynolds, John Rutherford Russell, Charles Caulfield Tuckey, George Wyld, Stephen Yeldham, and many others.

Hugh Cameron was a London homeopath listed in the Homeopathic Medical Directory of Great Britain and Ireland in 1871.

Hugh Cameron attended (Anon, The Homeopathic World, Volume 43, (1908). Page 236) the 2nd International Homeopathic Congress held in London (Anon, The Medical Counselor, Volume 7, (The Michigan State Homeopathic Society, 1883). Page 347) in on 11th-18th July 1881 (Anon, The Homeopathic World, (August 1,1881)) at Aberdeen House, Argyll Street, Regent Street.

In 1891, Hugh Cameron MRCS of 62 Redcliffe Square is listed in the London Homeopathic Hospital Reports of the London Homeopathic Hospital and of 4 Bolton Street in The British and Foreign Homeopathic Medical Directory and Record in 1855.

The Cholera outbreak of 1854:

Dr Macloughlin, one of the medical inspectors appointed by the General Board of Health, visited the wards, examined the cases under treatment, and watched their progress. His statement, addressed to Mr. Hugh Cameron, a member of the medical staff, was as follows :

“You are aware that I went to your hospital prepossessed against the homeopathic system, that you had in me in your camp an enemy rather than a friend… and I need not tell you that I have taken some pains to make myself acquainted with the rise, progress and medical treatment of cholera, and that I claim for myself some right to be able to recognise the disease, and to know something of what the medical treatment ought to be, and that there may, therefore, be no misapprehension about the cases 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 other.

“In conclusion I must repeat to you what I have already told you, and what I have told everyone whom I have conversed, that although in allopath by principle, education and practice yet were it the will of Providence to afflict me with cholera, and deprive me of the power of prescribing for myself, I would rather he in the hands of a homeopathic than; in allopathic adviser.”

One incident, however, claims attention. In the year 1854 a terrible recrudescence of cholera, due, as was supposed, to the contamination of the water furnished by the notorious Broad Street pump, in the parish of St James’s, Westminster, ravaged the Metropolis and particularly the immediate neighbourhood of the London Homeopathic Hospital (Golden Square).

Twenty two years before, cholera had sprung suddenly upon a profession utterly unprepared to deal with it and destitute of a principle to guide them in organising the best defence against the new foe.

In 1849 it was found that their experience had not taught them much. In 1854 they had still to search among their record of cases for any agreement as to the best way out of their perplexities.

Meanwhile the homeopathic section of the profession, relying upon the principle which directs them to seek for medicines capable of producing physiological phenomena similar to those exhibited by the disease, had never been in doubt.

Samuel Hahnemann, on receiving a detailed description of the disease in its various stages from a disciple who sought his guidance, had, without seeing a case, but relying solely on his law of drug selection, prescribed a course of remedies which, alike in 1832, 1849, and 1854, proved pre-eminently successful, and which to the present day constitute the treatment mainly relied upon by homeopathic practitioners.

Thus fortified the homeopaths did not shrink from the issue offered by the cholera outbreak of 1854. The whole of the wards of the London Homeopathic Hospital were devoted to the treatment of the epidemic, and 64 cases of cholera and 331 of choleraic and simple diarrhœa were treated.

Of the 61 cases of cholera treated, 10 died, a percentage of 16.4; of the 331 cases of choleraic and simple diarrhœa trated, 1 died.

The neighbouring Middlesex Hospital received 231 cases of cholera and 47 cases of choleraic diarrhœa. Of the cholera patients treated 123 died, a fatality rate of 53.2 per cent, among the victims being one of the nurses.

Of interest:

Robert Cameron MD Glasgow 1838 of South Parade, Huddersfield Yorks is listed in The British and Foreign Homeopathic Medical Directory and Record in 1853, and he is also listed in the Homeopathic Medical Directory in 1872.

William H Cameron is listed in the The British Journal of Homeopathy in 1857.

Charles Dickens uses the name Hugh Cameron as a fictional character in his Household Words in 1857.

James Peddie Harper was a British orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy. In 1882, James Peddie Harper moved from Windsor to take over the practice of Hugh Cameron in Hertford Street,