Domestic medicine : or, the family physician. A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases, by regimen and simple medicines: With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan.

Buchan William, 1729-1805.

Date:: 1817

Credit: Domestic medicine : or, the family physician. A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases, by regimen and simple medicines: With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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$I which produces heaviness, debility, and disease. Frequent in- i dpJgence. in dnnkin^ to excess causes a faintness and depression < of the spirits, winch can only be removed by having recourse to the favourite liquor, and the drunkard looks upon the repetition «of List night s debauch as the best remedy for its consequences I next day. Mild diluting liquors are rejected as insipid, and a succession of hot stimulants increases the action of the heart and arteries; the lungs become inflamed, arid a total relaxation of the -ystem ensues. CHAPTER VIII. V»w\v\wv\v\\»v\v\ T1 OF CLEANLINESS. HE want of cleanliness is a fault which admits of no excuse. Where water can be had for nothing it is surely in the power of every person to be clean. The continual discharge from our bodies by perspiration, renders frequent change of apparel neces- sary. Changing apparel greatly promotes the secretion from the skin, so necessary for health. When that matter which ought to be carried off by perspiration is either retained in the body, or re- absorbed from dirty clothes, it must occasion diseases. Diseases of the skin are chiefly owing to want of cleanliness* Ihey may indeed be caught by infection, or brought on by poor hving, unwholesome food, &c.; but they will seldom continue long where cleanliness prevails. To the same cause must we im- pute the various kinds of vermin which infest the human body, nT: &c- T1.lese ™ay aI,ways be banished by cleanliness alone, gkctedhereVer they‘ab°Und’ we have reason to believe it isne- Of clennW m°nS1Se pUtrid and maligant fevers is the want tants of T iT K‘Sie feVers co™m(m]y begin among the inhabi- tants of close dirty houses who breathe unwholesome air, take Srlv W b a Tl dIrty clothes- the infection is generally hatched, which often spreads far and wide, to the des- rhimr\ty-sweeper*’s^'canctr*'as men,tions a which he calk the This he attributes to neolp’r-t f 1 a 1,1051 peculiar to that unhappy set of people. •>». it .to Pz\ j° lin«”•.md ri:h s“ 1 ™ Sequent washing, it would never Ljnen The^r &Cpt dean ^ certainly the most miserable wwtchS w tL fa~ rf lv ?Sh “ SV -mnirs no Jnch pcTJDm are aecemrjf ' the fice of the e*rth. Fet, f« cleaciDE;$