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 / [William Buchan].

  • Buchan, William, 1729-1805
Date:
1786
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 / [William Buchan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and attention are mod neceffary, to hirelings, who are either too carelefs to do their duty, or too igno- rant to know it. We will venture to affirm, that more human lives are loft by the carelefinefs and in- attention of parents and nurfes, than are faved by the Faculty; and that the joint and well-conducted en- deavours, both of private perfons and the public, for the prefervation of infant lives, would be of more advantage to fociety, than the whole art of Medi- cine, upon its prefent footing. The benefits of Medicine, as a trade, will ever be confined to thofe who are able to pay for them; and of courfe, the far greater part of mankind will be every where deprived of them. Phyficians, like other people, muft live by their employment, and the poor muft either want advice altogether, or take up with that which is worfe than none. There are not, how- ever, any where wanting well-difpofed people, of better fenfe, who are willing to fupply the defeCt of medical advice to the poor, did not their fear of doing ill often fupprefs their inclination to do good. Such people are often deterred from the moft noble and praife-worthy actions, by the foolifh alarms founded in their ears by a fet of men, who, to raife their own importance, magnify the difficulties of doing good, find fault with what is truly commendable, and fleer at every attempt to relieve the flick which is not con- ducted by the precife rules of Medicine. Thefe gen- tlemen muft, however, excufe me for faying, that I have often known fuch well-difpofed perfons do much good; and that their practice, which is generally the refult of good fenfe and obfervation, aflifted by a little medical reading, is frequently more rational than that