Exhibition : Dr. Samuel Johnson and eighteenth century medicine , 5 January - 2 March 1984 / Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

  • Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
Date:
1984]
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Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Exhibition : Dr. Samuel Johnson and eighteenth century medicine , 5 January - 2 March 1984 / Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    10 22. Dr. Johnson's house, Gough Square. The garret workshop where Johnson compiled his dictionary. There were up to six amanuenses who worked at small tables copying out the quotations on to slips of paper. Johnson himself wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words and included about 114,000 quotations in the two volumes. The whole work took nine years to complete. 23. Photograph of an engraving from the portrait of Johnson, 1756, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. [In the National Portrait Gallery.] Case 5 Vigorous Remedies In this case can be seen some of the pharmacopoeias and materia medica text-books of Johnson's day, showing the remedies and treatment administered to him by his physicians, not always to his liking. For example, Johnson always remained opposed to excessive bleeding ('I shall try to escape another bleeding; for I am of the chemical sect who hold phlebotomy in abhorrence') but was willing to experiment with most of the other forms of treatment. He was dosed with ipecacuanha, squills, opium, Peruvian bark, and diascordium, and, following his stroke in 1783, Heberden and Brocklesby treated him with ammonia, blisters, nutritive diet and wine. He was not averse to prescribing for himself, and worked out a regimen for himself (and often for others). Fanny Burney wrote Johnson has been very unwell but he continues his strange discipline - starving, mercury, opium; and though for a time half demolished by its severity, he always in the end rises superior both to the