1850 CHOLERA EPIDEMIC. The Cholera in Cincinnati. A Debate between a Homeopathist and a Methodist. RARE.

A very scarce work which feels, well, strangely familiar. Cincinnati experienced a second massive outbreak of Cholera beginning in 1849. The medical response is reported as having been a disaster.

There is a fascinating article in the Summer, 2016 issue of Ohio Valley History, which notes that while there was a significant response from the . . . 

. . .  professional authority and the best efforts of the city’s Board of Health, antebellum Cincinnati remained an unregulated and often chaotic medical marketplace. In addition to supposedly reputable practitioners of allopathy, or mainstream medicine, the city housed a bewildering diversity of physicians, with one contemporary lamenting the abundance of “Homeopathic, Eclectic, Indian, and Negro doctors” then catering to public demand.

Against such variety, the health authority swore by “the tried and true therapeutics,” declaring “those who disdain them from their velvet perches…traitors to the Hippocratic tradition.” [See HERE for full article]

The debate preserved here records a fascinating part of that public brawling between medical authorities as Methodist divine, Samuel Arminius Latta, attempts to reign in the homeopathists, who he claims were drawing the people away from the established medical practices recommended by Board of Health and, according to Latta and the Board of Public Health, were endangering the entire community. 

Not offered on the market since 1983. 

Latta, S. A. The Cholera in Cincinnati: Or a Connected View of the Controversy Between the Homeopathists and the Methodist Expositor. Also, a Review of the Report Read Before the HomeoPathic Association. By S. A. Latta, M. D. Cincinnati: Morgan & Overend, Printers. 1850. 50pp.

A fair copy only, bound in wraps, shaken, with wraps nearly detached. Pages are handled, with light foxing and dampstained.