Domestic medicine, or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines : containing observations on the comparative advantages of vaccine inoculation, with instructions for performing the operation, an essay, enabling puptured [sic] persons to manage themselves, with engravings of bandages, which every person may prepare for himself, and a family herbal / by William Buchan, M.D. of the Royal College of Physicians, Edingburgh ; to which are added, such useful discoveries ... as have transpired since the demise of the author.
- Buchan, William, 1729-1805.
- Date:
- 1823
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Domestic medicine, or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines : containing observations on the comparative advantages of vaccine inoculation, with instructions for performing the operation, an essay, enabling puptured [sic] persons to manage themselves, with engravings of bandages, which every person may prepare for himself, and a family herbal / by William Buchan, M.D. of the Royal College of Physicians, Edingburgh ; to which are added, such useful discoveries ... as have transpired since the demise of the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.
![been impressed on their minds by some accident, or foolish predic- tion. This, for example, is often the case with women ni child-bed. Many of those w ho die in that situation are impressed with the notion of their ileath a long time before it happens; and there is reason to believe that this impression is often the cause of it. The methods taken to impress the minds of women with tlie ap- prehensions of the great pain and peril of child-birth are very hurt- ful Few women die in labour, though many lose their lives after it; which mav be thus accounted for. A woman after delivery, finding her>;elf weak and exhausted, immediately apprehends she is in dan- ger; but this fear seldom fails to obstruct the necessary evacuations, upon which her recovery depeads. Thus the sex often fall a sacri- fice to their own imaginations, when there would be no danger, did they apprehend none. . It seldom happens that two or three women in a great town die m child-bed, but their death is followed by many others. Every wo- man of their acquaintance who is with child dreads the same fate, and die disease becomes epidemical by the mere force of imagination. This should induce pregnant women to despise fear, and by all means to avoid those tattling gossips who are continually buzzing in their ears the misfortunes of others. Every thing that may in the least alarm a pregnant or child-bed woman, ought with the greatest care to be guarded against. Many women have lost their lives in child-bed by the old supersti- tious custom, still kept up in most parts of Britain, of tolling the parioh bell for every person who dies. People who think themselves, in danger are very inquisitive; and if they come to know that the bel.' toTls for one who died in the same situation with themselves,, what must be tlie consequence ] At any rate they are apt to suppose, that this is the case, and it will often be found a very difficult matter to persuade them to the contrary. But this custom is not pernicious to child-bed women only. It is hurtful in many other cases. When low fevers, in which it is difficult to support the patient's spirits, prevail, what must be the effect of a funeral peal sounding five or six times a day in his ears 1 No doubt liii imagination may suggest that others died of the same disease under which he labours. This apprehension will have a greater tea- dency to depress his spirits, than all the cordials of whit;h medicine can boast will have to raise them. If this useless piece of ceremony cannot be abolished, we ought to keep the sick as much from hearing it as possible, and from every other thing diat may tend to alarm them. .So far however is this from being generally attended to, that many make it their business- to visit the sick, on purpose to whisper dismal stories in their ears. ■Such may pass for sympathizing friends, but they ought rather to be considered as enemies. All who wish well to the sick ought to keep such persons at the greatest distance from them. A custom has long prevailed among physicians of prognosticating, a* they call it, the patient's late, or foretelling the issue of the dis oease. Vanity no doubt introduced this practice, and still suports](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21441017_0069.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
