Dr Ure’s Cure for Cholera

March 21, 2009 at 9:51 am (cholera, Dr Ure, e h ruddock, vitalogy)

On page 112 of the 1927 edition of Vitalogy we find Dr Ure’s celebrated remedy for Cholera –

“Tincture of kino……..1 ounce
Tincture of opium……..4 drachms
Common Starch…….1 ounce
Tepid water…….3 wineglassfuls
Mix.  Inject slowly into the bowels.


This injection mixture should be of about the thickness of thin gruel.   If it should come away, it should be repeated immediately.   If the injection be properly administered, and in sufficient quantity, it will stop the discharge from the bowels in fifteen minutes, and nothing will pass them for several days.  If the above injection cannot be quickly obtained, a preparation of starch-water, containing a solution of alum or aludanum, forms a convenient and effective injection.  I have seldon failed to cure this diseases with this remedy.


To cure nausea at beginning of an attack, wring a cloth out of hot turpentine, place on the bowels, and givecarbonic acid water to drink, or champagne if you can get it.”

I should warn people not to do this at home, although I guess that for around 40 years the readers of this book were probably doing this very thing.

When I found this I thought I’d try and find out who Dr Ure might be and came across this article in the
Medical Times of 1850: “The General Malaria of London and the Peculiar Malaria of Pimlico Investigated and the weans of their Economical Removal ascertained By ANDREW URE MD FRS Pamphlet Pp 39 London 1850 We believe Dr Ure to have been unfairly treated in the Kenilworth street affair and that Prussian blue did actually exist in the mud of that fatal sewer There can be no doubt that gas lime refuse is a source of malaria and the sulphuret and cyanide of lime which it contains a potent cause of disease and death We shall have occasion to allude to the Kenilworth street tragedy in a future article on Hygiene meanwhile Dr Ure may reconcile himself to the opposition with which his views have been received by the conviction that through his agency one of the hitherto unknown and secret sources of destruction and death has been brought to light To be forewarned is to be forearmed”.

Could this be the same celebrated Dr Ure who could cure cholera with this mixture?