A GUIDE TO HEALTH, BEING AN EXPOSITION OF THE THOMSONIAN SYSTEM OF PRACTICE, AND THEIR MODE OF APPLICATION IN THE CURE OF EVERY FORM OF DISEASE; EMBRACING A CONCISE VIEW OF THE VARIOUS THEORIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN PRACTICE.

Colby, Benjamin:

Published by Milford, N.H.: John Burns, 1846 [i.e. 1848].

About this Item

181,[1]pp. plus eleven plates (including frontispiece). Contemporary calf, gilt morocco label. Spine rubbed and scuffed, hinges and spine ends worn, modest edge wear. Bookseller label on front pastedown. Pencil marks on front endpapers and final page of text. Tear in outer margin of p. vii, not affecting text. Internally clean. Overall, a very good copy. "Third edition, enlarged and revised," stated on titlepage. The verso of the title-leaf is printed with a "Preface to the Fourth Edition," dated 1848. Largely a domestic medicine work, offering various botanico-medical remedies for common ailments, A GUIDE TO HEALTH. is also an important apologia for Samuel Thomson's populist medical movement - and a scathing attack on the practices of contemporary standard medicine. In AMERICA'S BOTANICO-MEDICAL MOVEMENTS, authors Alex Berman and Michael Flannery cite a portion of Colby's invective from his preface, p. vii: "The imposition practiced by medical men in writing their prescriptions in Latin, and the evils resulting from it by the ignorance or carelessness of apothecaries or their clerks, who may know nothing about the language in which the prescription is written - the mistakes of whom have destroyed thousands of lives, are too obvious to be misunderstood." ATWATER 708. CORDASCO 400243. Alex Berman & Michael A. Flannery, AMERICA'S BOTANICO-MEDICAL MOVEMENTS (New York, 2001), pp.83, 199. Seller Inventory # 34841

Bibliographic Details

Title: A GUIDE TO HEALTH, BEING AN EXPOSITION OF ...

Publisher: Milford, N.H.: John Burns, 1846 [i.e. 1848].