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.

    23/792
    | ' ' * \ * i * * * • ance. An implicit faith in the opinions of teachers, an attachment to fyftems and eftablifhed forms, and the dread of reflections, will always operate upon thofe who follow Medicine as a trade. Few im¬ provements are to be expeCted from a man who might ruin his character and family by even the Imalleft deviation from an eftablifhed rule. If men of letters, fays the author of the per¬ formance quoted above, were to claim their right of enquiry into a matter that fo nearly concerns them, the good eftedts on Medicine would foon appear.. Such men would have no feparate intereft from that of the art. They would detect and expofe afluming Ignorance under the mafic: of Gravity and Importance, and would be the judges and patrons of modeft merit. Not having their underftandings perverted in their youth by falfe theories, unawed by authority, and unbiafled by intereft, they would canvafs with freedom the moft univerfally received principles in Medicine, and expofe the uncertainty of many of thofe dodtrines, of which a phyfician dares not fo much as feem to doubt. No argument, continues he, can be brought againft laying open Medicine, which does not apply with equal, if not greater force, to religion; yet experience has fhewn, that fince the laity have af- ferted their right of enquiry into thefe fubjedts, The¬ ology, confldered as a fcience, has been improved, the interefts of real religion have been promoted, and the clergy have become a more learned, a more ufeful, and a more refpedtable body of men, than they ever were in the days of their greateft power and fplendor. a 2 Had