Domestic medicine, or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines : with observations on sea-bathing, and the use of mineral waters, to which is annexed a dispensary for the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan ... From the 22nd Engl. ed., with additions and notes.

  • William Buchan
Date:
1832
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 observations on sea-bathing, and the use of mineral waters, to which is annexed a dispensary for the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan ... From the 22nd Engl. ed., with additions and notes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    i] 20. OBSERVATIONS ON ALIMENT. ments of reform would have the effect to render it as agreeable as it is salutary. ae oe de Adults have many old prejudices to overcome, but the case is different in regard to.children. They may be taught to use any kind of food, and what they use when young, they will love when old. If I can introduce a different method of feeding children, my purpose will be answered. This alone will, in time, effect a total change in the general mode of living. Kai Particular attention has been paid to the substitutes for bread, - as the scarcity of this article proves peculiarly distressing to the poor. It will appear from the following pages, that bread is by no means so much a necessary of life as is generally imagined, and that its place may, in many instances, be supplied by a variety of other farinaceous substances. $ N | GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON ALIMENT, No creature eats such a variety of food as man. Intended for an inhabitant of every climate, he devours the productions of them all; and if they do not suit his palate, or agree with his stomach, he calls in the aid of cookery, an art peculiar to himself; by which many things that, in a crude state, would prove hurtful, or even poisonous, are rendered wholesome and salutary. ! The obvious division of food is into animal and vegetable. To say that man was intended by nature for using either the one or the other alone, would be absurd. His structure and appetite prove that he was formed for both. Judgment, however, is requi- site in adjusting the due proportion of each, so as to avoid the inconveniences arising from an extreme on either hand. Though animal food is more nourishing than vegetable, it is not ‘safe to live on that alone. Experience has shown that a diet, consisting solely of animal food, excites thirst and nausea, occa- sions putrescence in the stomach and bowels, and finally brings on violent griping pains, with cholera and dysentery. ee Animal food is less adapted to the sedentary than the laborious, and least of all to the studious, whose diet ought to consist chiefly of vegetables. Indulging in animal food renders men dull, and ‘unfit forthe pursuits of science, especially when it is accompanied with the free use of strong liquors. | NOS The plethoric, or persons of a full habit, should eat sparingly of animal food. It yields far more blood than vegetables taken in ’ the same quantity, and, of course, may induce inflammatory disor- ders. It acts as a stimulus to the whole system, by which means the circulation of the blood is greatly accelerated. — | Tam inclined to think that consumptions, so common in England, are in part owing to the great use of animal food. — Though pul- monary consumption is not, properly speaking, am inflammatory disease, yet it generally begins with symptoms of inflammation, — and is often accompanied with them through its whole progress. But the disease most common to this country is the scurvy. One finds a taint of it in almost every family, and in some the taint is very deep. A disease so general must have a general cause, and there is none so obvious as the great quantity of salted yt ei 3 ay he