The new domestic medicine. Or, 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 ... ; To which is now first added, memoirs of the life of Dr. Buchan: and important extracts from other works, praticularly his 'Advice to mothers' ... by William Nisbet. Including also new treatises on sea-bathing, etc.

William Buchan

Date:: 1809

Credit: The new domestic medicine. Or, 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 ... ; To which is now first added, memoirs of the life of Dr. Buchan: and important extracts from other works, praticularly his 'Advice to mothers' ... by William Nisbet. Including also new treatises on sea-bathing, etc. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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]ng endeavoured to prove that health is so indispensable a Requisite in females before marriage, they may well suppose that 1 deem it no less necessary in the other sex I am always sorry to see that precious blessing sacrificed in an alliance with infirmity, or youth and beauty consigned to the frozen arms of age. Misery must be the inevitable consequence of such unnatural matches. But I fear that my remonstrances will have little effect in restraining the undue exercise of parental authority, or in attempting to open the eyes of a woman to her certain destruction when she suffers herself to be dazzled by the splendour of riches, or charmed by the sound of an empty title.” The Doctor then proceeds to state the horrid crime of producing abortion. “ The unnatural mother,” says he, “is not always the only monster concerned in those scenes of horror: her base seducer is too often the adviser of the desperate resolution, and crowns his guilty joys with double murder! Another ruffian, some male or female practitioner in midwifery, is also engaged in the hellish plot, and lends a hand to perpetrate the foul deed, alike regardless of the mother’s danger, and deaf to the cries of infant blood ! I never heard without shuddering any advertisement of temporary retreats, or pretended ac- commodations for pregnant ladies; I always view it as a wicked allurement to unfortunate women, and as a daring hint from some ready assassin of innocence. It is not long since one of those wretches was convicted of killing both mother and child; and I have myself seen a great number of embryos exhibited by a man, who, I firmly believe, obtained them this way. The dread of public shame or of private scorn, though no excuse for murder, may urge the victim of seduction to commit a crime at once so abominable and so dangerous. But is it possible that a married woman should madly and wickedly attempt to procure abortion, merely from an apprehension of a large family, or to avoid the trouble of bearing and bringing up children? Can she hope to taste the joys, and yet destroy the fruits, of love ? What £ frantic idea!—The same poison puts an end to both.

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