Domestic Medicine

Published in 1769, this immensely popular guide to healthy living and the home treatment of common ailments illuminates eighteenth-century concerns.

Taking the view that medicine is as much the art of avoiding ill health as it is the cure of disease, physician William Buchan (1729–1805) published this guide to the prevention and home treatment of common ailments in 1769. Its popularity led to multiple further editions over the next century.Taking the view that medicine is as much the art of avoiding ill health as it is the cure of disease, physician William Buchan (1729–1805) published this home health guide in 1769. The first part is devoted to preventing ailments through proper diet and exercise, while the second part helps families diagnose and treat maladies ranging from coughs and hiccups to jaundice and gout. Buchan showed particular concern for the health of women and children, whom he believed were often misunderstood and neglected. He condemned corsets and restrictive infant swaddling, discouraged 'high living' and indolence, and blamed the high child-mortality rate on upper-class ignorance of child-rearing wisdom. His book became the most popular health guide prior to the twentieth century, with over a hundred editions by 1871. This reissue is of the first edition. Its diagnoses of physical (and cultural) ailments will illuminate eighteenth-century concerns for modern readers.