Domestic medicine: or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases, by regimen and simple medicines: with an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan.

  • Buchan, William, 1729-1805.
Date:
1812
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Domestic medicine: or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases, by regimen and simple medicines: with an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. WHEN I first signified my intention of publishing the following sheets, I was told by my friends it would draw on me the resentment of the whole Faculty. As I never could entertain such an unworthy idea of physicians, I was re- solved to make the experiment, which indeed came out pretty much as might have been expected. By the more selfish and narrow-minded part of the Faculty, the performance was con- demned ; while many of those, whose learning and liberality of sentiment do honour to Medicine, received it in a manner which at once shewed their indulgence, and the falsehood of the common opinion, that all physicians wish to conceal their art. The reception which the book has met with from the pub- lic is still more flattering, and merits my most grateful acknow- ledgments. As the best way of expressing these, I have endea- voured to render it more generally useful, both by enlarging the prophylaxis, or that part which treats of preventing dis- eases ; and likewise by adding many articles which were en- tirely omitted in the former impressions. It is needless to enumerate these additions. I shall only say, that they have cost me some pains, and I hope they will be found real im- provements. The observations relative to nursing and the management of children, were chiefly suggested by an extensive practice among infants, in a large branch of the Foundling Hospital, where I had an opportunity not only of treating the diseases incident to childhood, but likewise of trying different plans of nursing, and observing their effects. Whenever I had it in my power to place the children under the care of proper nurses, to instruct these nurses in their duty, and to be satis-