To the Editor of the Brighton Gazette.

4to, printed broadside [22.5 x 18.5 cm], dusty, old folds and marks of having once been mounted in an album.

As one of chief promoters of homeopathy in Brighton, George James Hilbers (1818-1883), took affront to the doctors connected with the Brighton Medical Society who were preventing children and adults being treated under the care of a homeopath practitioner.

The three institutes for women and girls in Brighton that Hilbers was prevented from included St Mary's Hall, for the daughters of clergymen of small income; the Convalescent Ladies Home for sick ladies of small income; and the Industrial Home for Girls at Egremont Place for poor girls and orphans of good character. In each case Hilbers states that the doctors of the town closed ranks rather than let a homeopath treat a willing patient, and it was the patient that was dismissed from the institution rather than there letting Hilbers attend to their needs. Clearly this was something that had been simmering in Hilbers mind for some time as the events he details happened in 1850, 1854 and 1857. What sparked his sudden outburst to the ^gBrighton Gazette^g is unknown, however he clearly took care to have the article printed as a broadside for distribution and support for his having been snubbed.

Brighton then, and now, something of a competitive ground for various forms of rival treatments proffered to a large population looking for good health. Although Hilbers had trained as a medical doctor at St Andrews in 1841 he quickly became a practitioner of Homeopathy and a member of the Northern Homeopathic Medical Association. In 1847 he was the first homeopathic practitioner to seek appointment at a public hospital, and it has to be added, also the first to be rejected! By 1855 he had settled in Brighton where he became both a harsh critic of mainstream medicine and a successful practitioner of homeopathy there.

His obituary in ^gThe British Journal of Homoeopathy^g is telling, it relates that Hilbers's 'personal qualities added greatly and deservedly to his popularity. He was very hospitable, generous and charitable to a degree, and a capital companion, a great talker, with an amusing style of speech richly seasoned with epigram and paradox. His figure will be greatly missed in social circles.' However, the writer also caustically adds that 'It was not that our late colleague had contributed anything to the development of homeopathy,—his few writings on the subject being rather critical of the work of others than communicative of his own. What influence he exercised, moreover, was decidedly obstructive as regards advance either in diagnosis or its treatment; he scorned the use of the thermometer, and declined from sheer scepticism to employ the remedies recently introduced from America.'

His opponents in Brighton did not rise to the bate in 1858, with only a short and rather vague reply being published in a following number of the ^gBrighton Gazette^g. We can only conclude that Hilbers was chiefly concerned with advancing his own popularity.