The house book; or, family chronicle of useful knowledge, and cottage physician: combining medicine, cookery, diet, general economy, health, sea-bathing, gardening, manufactures, arts, etc., ... including upwards of a thousand select recipes and prescriptions / [William Scott].

  • William Scott
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The house book; or, family chronicle of useful knowledge, and cottage physician: combining medicine, cookery, diet, general economy, health, sea-bathing, gardening, manufactures, arts, etc., ... including upwards of a thousand select recipes and prescriptions / [William Scott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stitches in the side, sore throats, hoarseness, rheuma¬ tism, See. In those persons who, from natural inactivity, use little exercise, the fluids are apt to stagnate, and the solids to become chill during the winter, giving rise to diseases, by impeding the circulation of the blood, the secretion of the various humours, &c. by checking the insensible perspiration. The humidity of the atmosphere is another cause of disease, which, when increased, never fails to bring along with it that unaccountable torpor and lassitude by which the mind becomes sensibly depressed ; and with the loss of energy which accompanies such a state, that cheerfulness and equanimity are lost, which are its cha¬ racteristics under different and more agreeable impres¬ sions. Damp places and districts, particularly in cold weather, are always unhealthy. Moisture, by diminishing perspiration, is no less productive of disorders of the throat, chest, and abdomen. Dry and Cool Air, from its possessing a sufficient degree of elasticity, promotes in an extraordinary degree the serenity and agility of both mind and body ; hence its decided benefit to people of a hypochondriacal dispo¬ sition. But a dry and very cold air generates inflamma¬ tions, from its tending to thicken the blood. Dry and hot air affects us like heat, and enervates the body; and a dry air, which is not too warm, is both agreeable and healthy. Great and hasty transitions from a w arm to a cold, or from a light to a heavy air, are highly injurious to valetudina¬ rians, as well as to those in a state of health. Soldiers in camps, and travellers, feel, not unfrequently, very severely the bad effects of cold and moist air, after long marches and journeys. Infirm and weakly people very often experience omi¬ nous sensations previous to any remarkable changes in the state of the atmosphere. A moderately heavy and elastic air, is the most salutary as well as the most agree¬ able to the human body; hence the reason we are not assigned by Nature to reside constantly on the tops of mountains. A light and rarefied air is, nevertheless, not so ill adapted for respiration, nor does it manifest an influence so prejudicial to the human frame as was for¬ merly imagined. As regards clothing, which, judiciously arranged, is calculated in a great measure, if not entirely, to counter¬ act the baleful influence of cold and moisture, it may be
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