The Domestic physician, or, Guide to families : containing directions for the preservation of health, and the removal of disease : also, a plain and accurate description of the complaints generally incident to the human frame : with an account of the most efficacious remedies, and directions how to use them : chiefly selected from the best authors, and made plain to persons of common understanding.

Date:
[1814]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Domestic physician, or, Guide to families : containing directions for the preservation of health, and the removal of disease : also, a plain and accurate description of the complaints generally incident to the human frame : with an account of the most efficacious remedies, and directions how to use them : chiefly selected from the best authors, and made plain to persons of common understanding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    t % to every person, whether single or married, but more especially to the latter, to do every thing possible to preserve health, or, if attacked by disease, to use the most proper means for its removal. But how can poor people be expected to use pro- per means to preserve their health, when they know not what these means are? To the subject of ana- tomy, they are mostly utter strangers. The virtues of simples in medicine, they have not studied. The proper nature of compounds in the Pharmacopoeia, is above their present knowledge. In the more remote counties of the United Kingdom, and indeed in almost every part of it, except the metropolis and chief towns, medical assistance is placed at such a distance from the major part of the inhabitants, and the expence of obtaining it so considerable, that the patient’s case frequently becomes desperate, before proper aid can be procured; or, his circumstances may preclude his seeking it at all. When we reflect on the precariousness of man’s existence in this life; the multiplicity of dangers with which he is surrounded from the first moment of his being, and the construction of the animal machine, that the means necessary for its preservation are so many instruments wearing out its powers, and conducing to dissolution; when we consider that he is subject to an immense variety of diseases in every stage of life; diseases, which may cut him off even in the bloom and vigour of his age; it will not appear extra- ordinary, that many men of the first abilities have devoted themselves to the study of Medicine, in order to cure those maladies, or check their farther progress.