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, M.D. fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edingburgh.

  • Buchan, William, 1729-1805.
Date:
1790
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, M.D. fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edingburgh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    ions and the public, for the prefervation of infant lives, would be of more advantage to fociety, than the whole art of Medicine, upon its prefent foot- ing. The benefits of Medicine, as a trade, will ever be confined to thole 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 however 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 fick which is not conducted by the precise rules of Medicine. Thefe gentlemen 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, affifted by a little medical reading, is frequently more ra- tional than that of the ignorant retainer to phyfic, who defpifes both reafon and obfervation, that he may go wrong by rule; and who, while he is doting his patient with medicines, often neglects other things of far greater importance. Many things are neceffary for the fick befides medicine. Nor is the perfon who takes care to procure thofe for them, of lefs importance than a phyfician. The poor oftener perifh in difeafes for want of proper nurfing than of medicine. They are