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.

  • Buchan, William, 1729-1805.
Date:
1774
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. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the Foundling Hofpital, where I had an opportu¬ nity not only of treating the difeafes incident to child¬ hood, but likewife of trying different plans of nurfing, and obferving their effedts. Whenever I had it in my power to place the children under the care of proper nurfes, to inftrudt thefe nurfes in their duty, and to be fatisfied that they performed it, very few of them died *, but when, from diftance of place, and other unavoidable drcumflances, the children were left to the foie care of mercenary nurfes, without any perfon to inftrudt or fuperintend them, fcarce any of them lived. Th is was fo apparent as, with me, to amount to a proof of the following melancholy fadt: That al- moft one half of the human fpecies perifh in infancy, by improper management or negleB, This reflexion has made me often with to be the happy inftrument of alleviating the miferies of thofe fuffering innocents, or of refcuing them from an untimely grave. No one who has not had an opportunity of obferving them, can imagine what abfurd and ridiculous prac¬ tices flill prevail in the nurfing and management of infants, and what numbers of mankind perifh by thefe practices. Many of them, however, are owing t:> ignorance •, and it is to be hoped, that when nurfes are better informed, their conduct will be very dif¬ ferent. The application of medicine to the various occu¬ pations of life w'as likewife chiefly the refult of oh- fervation. An eitenfive practice for fever’al years, in one of the largeft manufadturing towns in Eng¬ land, afforded me fufficient opportunities of ob¬ ferving the injuries which thofe ufeful people fuftain from