John Locke, 1632-1704, physician and philosopher : a medical biography / with an edition of the medical notes in his journals.

  • Dewhurst, Kenneth.
Date:
1963
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: John Locke, 1632-1704, physician and philosopher : a medical biography / with an edition of the medical notes in his journals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/374 (page XI)
    of John Locke whose medical training helped him to begin the whole empirical movement of modern philosophy. In transcribing the text I have constantly striven to allow clarity of interpretation to supersede the demands of pedantry. It has not been an easy task. Locke wrote in English, French, Latin, and shorthand as the nature and delicacy of his subject required: he also used frequent abbreviations, alchemical and pharmaceutical symbols. His hand writing, though small, is neat and legible. He uses many obvious abbreviations such as yu, wch, ye, agt; and occasionally, less well known ones such as phia (philosophia), nääl (natural), and määl (material). He used them to save time, and herein they have been ex panded. In all other respects the English text is unaltered. Dr. von Ley- den was the first to investigate the nature of Locke's shorthand which he used for secrecy and speed. It is a modification of Jeremiah Rich's method which was deciphered by comparison with identical longhand passages in the notebooks. Locke adopted Rich's system of consonants, his method of indicating vowels, and some of his contractions : the rest was his own system, interspersed with the occasional word in long hand. The shorthand, French, and Latin passages have all been trans lated into English, and a marginal note in round brackets opposite each translation indicates the language of the original text. Locke's prescriptions have been simplified by substituting the written word for the symbols of ounce, drachm, scruple, etc. Whenever pos sible, the English name of the many herbs mentioned has been substi tuted for the Latin, for which the following books have been useful guides: The Works of Thomas Sydenham (1848), 4th edition, ed. R. G. Latham; Chronicles of Pharmacy (1910), A. C. Wootton; London Pharmacopoeia (1678) which is bound behind Locke's medical notebooks (B.L., MS. Locke, f. 23) of 1681; Anecdota Sydenhamiana (1845), ed. W. A. Greenhill, and The English Herbal of Physical Plants (1694), com piled by John Pechey. Finally, the current name of a chemical has been substituted for the alchemical symbol found in the text, and square brackets have been placed around the word replacing the symbol. Keys to these alchemical symbols are to be found in the works of Holmyard 1 and Reid. 2 Square brackets are also used to indicate any additions to the text such as those which give Locke's whereabouts, whenever this is not clear from his own entries. The following abbre viations have been used in the footnotes: B.L. (Bodleian Library), B.M. (British Museum), and P.R.O. (Public Record Office). A number of people have helped in the preparation of this book, 1 E. J. Holmyard, Alchemy (1957), London, pp. 149-50. 2 John Reid, Prelude to Chemistry (1930), London, p. 90.