Edward Hamilton (homeopath)

Edward Hamilton (1815 – 3 August 1903) was an English physician who practiced homeopathy, and is noted for his 1852–53 two-volume work The Flora Homoeopathica with colour illustrations and descriptions of the medicinal plants then used in homoeopathic remedies.

An 1866 report by William Coutts Keppel, also known as Viscount Bury, on the treatment of Rinderpest by homeopathy, noted that the Dutch had enjoyed great success, leading to Hamilton's visiting the Netherlands and Belgium to investigate the work of Jules Gaudy and E Seutin.

As a result of these studies, John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, was appointed Chairman of the Association for the Trial of Preventative and Curative Treatment in the Cattle Plague by the Homeopathic Method, and headed a task force made up of Edward Hamilton, George Lennox Moore, James Moore and Alfred Crosby Pope.

In this report he refuted an article published in The Lancet in which the homeopathic approach to the cattle plague was disparaged and William Coutts Keppel accused of ‘being completely misinformed on this matter‘.

He was a student of Frederic Hervey Foster Quin, the first President of the British Homeopathic Society, lodging with him from 1834 to 1839, and becoming his executor on his death.