Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 991

WILLIAM BUCHAN (1729-1805) Domestic medicine: or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines. Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell; and J. Balfour, and W. Creech 1784 8th ed. xxxvi, 767 [36] pp. 20.4 cm.

Buchan, a native of Scotland, practiced in Yorkshire for a time and later taught at Edinburgh where he had received his medical degree in 1761. He was unsuccessful in his bid for the chair of medicine at Edinburgh and, in 1778, moved to London where he soon acquired a large practice. Buchan first published Domestic medicine at Edinburgh in 1769. It had an enormous circulation, no fewer than nineteen editions being published during the author's lifetime, and it continued in print until the mid-nineteenth century. Buchan gives simple and easily followed advice in this book and deals at considerable length with various matters that may affect the health, such as diet, ventilation, sleep, cleanliness, and infection. The greater part of the treatise is taken up with a description of the causes, management, and treatment of diseases, such as fevers, pneumonia, smallpox, whooping cough, and colic. His remarks are of lasting value and give valuable insight into the relationship between social conditions and disease in the eighteenth century.

Cited references: Cushing B826 (Edinburgh ed., 1769); Wellcome II, p. 261

Gift of Robert N. Larimer, M.D