New guide to health, or, Botanic family physician : containing a complete system of practice, upon a plan entirely new : with a description of the vegetables made use of, and directions for preparing and administering them to cure disease : to which is prefixed, A narrative of the life and medical discoveries of the author / by Samuel Thomson.

  • Thomson, Samuel, 1769-1843.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New guide to health, or, Botanic family physician : containing a complete system of practice, upon a plan entirely new : with a description of the vegetables made use of, and directions for preparing and administering them to cure disease : to which is prefixed, A narrative of the life and medical discoveries of the author / by Samuel Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    put a cloth wet with cold water on the stomach, at the, same time giving hot medicine to raise the heat inside; and when they had been steamed in this manner as long as I thought they could bear it, then rub them all over with a cloth wet with spirit, vinegar, or cold water, change their clothes and bed clothes, and then let them go to bed. A short time before this daughter was sick, my oldest son was born, and was very weakly in consequence ot his mother's having previous to his birth, what is called a three months' fever, which experience gave me a pretty good knowledge of the practice of the doctors in prolonging a disease ; fori never could reconcile myself to the idea, that a doctor could be of any use if the fe- ver must have its course, and nature had to perform the cure, at the same time the doctor gets his pay and the credit of it. if the patient's constitution is so strong as to enable them to struggle against the operation of the medicine and the disorder, they will recover; but if not they run down in what the doctors call a galloping consumption. The doctor proceeded in this way with my wife until I was satisfied of his plan, when 1 inter- fered and dismissed him. As soon as she left off taking his medicine, she began gradually to gain her health and soon got about. When this son was about six weeks old, he was at- tacked wito the croup, or rattles, he was taken a lit- tle before sunset with a hoarseness, was very much clogged with phlegm, and breathed with so much diffi- culty, that he could be heard all over the house. I sent for the doctor, and he attended him till about ten o'clock at night without doing him any good, and then went away, saying that he would not live till morning. After he was gone, 1 was again obliged to call on the mother of invention, and try what 1 could do myself. I searched the house for some rattlesnake's oil, and was so fortunate as to rind about three or four drops, which I immediately gave him and it loosened the phlegm,and he soon began to breathe easy; by close attention through the night, the child was quite comfortable in the morn- ing. The doctor came in the next day and expressed great astonishment on finding the child alive ; and was