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. ... To which is now added, a complete index / by William Buchan.

  • Buchan William, 1729-1805.
Date:
1806
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. ... To which is now added, a complete index / by William Buchan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    fied that they performed it, very few of them died; but when, from distance of place, and other unavoidable circumstances, the children were left to the sole care of mercenary nurses, without any person to instruct or superintend them, scarce any of them lived. This was so apparent as, with me, to amount to a proof of the following melancholy fact: That almost one half of the human, species perish in infancy, by improper management or neglect. This reflection has made me often wish to be the happy instru- ment of alleviating the miseries of those suffering innocents, or of rescuing them from an untimely grave. No one who has not had an opportunity of observing them, can imagine what ab- surd and ridiculous practices still prevail in the nursing and ma- nagement of infants, and what numbers of mankind perish by these practices. Many of them however, are owing to igno- rance : and it is to be hoped, that when nurses are better in- formed, their conduct will be very different. The application of medicine to the various occupations of life was likewise chiefly the result of observation. An extensive practice for several years, in one of the largest manufacturing towns in England, afforded me sufficient opportunities of observ- ing the injuries which those useful people sustain from their par- ticular employments, and likewise of trying various methods of obviating such injuries. The success which attended these trials was sufficient to encourage this attempt, which I hope will be of use to those who are under the necessity of earning their bread by such employments as are unfavourable to health. I do not mean to intimidate men, far less to insinuate that even those arts, the practice of which is attended with some degree of danger, should not be carried on: but to guard the less cautious and unweary against those dangers which they have it in their power to avoid, and which they often, through mere fool-hardiness, incur. As every occupation in life dis- poses those who follow it to some particular diseases more tnan