John Locke, 1632-1704, physician and philosopher : a medical biography / with an edition of the medical notes in his journals.

Kenneth Dewhurst

Date:: 1963

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: John Locke, 1632-1704, physician and philosopher : a medical biography / with an edition of the medical notes in his journals. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$rather to avoid wrong treatments and the new illnesses which they might lead to, than to actually cure diseases. 1 J.L. Swimming in the head and sicknesse in the stomach when they sit up commonly accompanys those who by any acute disease have been brought low, as long as they keepe a very spare diet though the disease be quit gon. But as soon as by eating flesh they recover strength those symptoms vanish which seems to depend on noe thing but want of spirits. But how the siting up gives occasion to it? And whether the disorder be original in the stomach and communicated to the head, or rather (which I imagin) originally in the head and communicated to the stomach. Q. This was Mr. Banks 2 Iris case in the loosenesse with the fever he had here where in I found it necessary to keep him to a diet of watergruell some days after his disease was quite cured, but as soon as he began to eat flesh it put an end to those remaining marks of weak- nesse. J.L. Mon. July 25. Take strong vinegar 10 pints, good [spirits of wine] 4 pints. Slake in it lime 2\ pints with arsenic 2 ozs. in powder. Stomach also in powder 3 drachms. Stirr all together for the space of three hours and then let it settle for four or five hours and then pour off the clear supernatant fluid into a bottle and add to it [corrosive sublimate] ij ozs., [spirits of vitriolum] \ oz., and good [spirits of wine] 1 pint, which being done, store well and then bottle and shake it often during three or four years. It becomes of a deep amber colour, and the older the better, for gangrene. Thürs. Jul. 28. Take \ or 1 drachm powdered leaves of sunflower for 10 or 20 consecutive days; this cures advanced virulent gonorrhoea, as Dr. Godfrey has experienced. Take 1 or iJr ozs. of powdered violet seeds and infuse overnight in 4 or 5 ozs. of wine. An excellent purgative in chest and kidney diseases and the colic; for it purges gently and without any griping. Take a quantity of a green root (Hound's Tongue as I remember), cut into slivers, thread on a cord and hang around the neck like a necklace; in 24 hours cures ulcers of the mouth (in English cankers), 1 This initialled note gives the essence of Locke's views on medicine; and it also shows the extent of Sydenham's influence. He was now turning away from humoral pathology (which was to dominate medical thought until Virchow's time), and in suggesting the use of specific remedies for each disease, Locke predicted the modern approach: specific organisms eliminated by appropriate chemotherapy or antibiotics. Humoral pathology still lingers on under the modern classification of body types, and as Locke suggests, there is some evidence to show that a certain body build has a greater propensity to one type of mental illness than another. But an awareness of a certain diathesis does not, in the least, help a physician to cure diseases, although it may, on occasion, help him to prevent them. 2 Locke's departure from Orleans was delayed for sixteen days on account of Caleb Banks's illness, which was probably dysentery. Vertigo p. 219 Gangrene pp. 222-3 (Shorthand) Venerea p. 223 (Latin) Catharticum pp. 223-4 (Latin) Oris ulcera p. 224 (Latin)$