Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 634

GIDEON HARVEY (1640?-1700?) The disease of London: or, A new discovery of the scorvey. Printed by T. James, for W. Thackery 1675 [14] 296 pp. 16.5 cm.

Though Harvey was a successful clinician, physician to Charles II and William III, as well as city physician of London, he was a medical outsider. He was a severe critic of and scourge to his contemporaries, whom he designated "dung-doctors," because of some of their clinical methods. Although he wrote almost endlessly on philosophy, diseases, cures, real or imagined quackery and charlatanry, with many of his books passing through two or three editions, the Dictionary of national biography (Vol. IX, p. 87) flatly states that "his works have no scientific value." The present work on the scurvy deals with its causes, symptoms, and "several methods of curing the said disease by remedies, both Galenical, and chymical."

Gift of John Martin, M.D.