Image Details
| Title: | Title page of 'Physick for families' |
|---|---|
| Description: | Title page from "Physick for families", William Walwyn (1681). The author was politically active during the time of the English Civil War, and a leading member of the Levellers. He believed in religious tolerance, popular sovereignty and an extension of the voting franchise, and in 1649 he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After his release he withdrew from political activity and took up medicine. Inspired by the work of Van Helmont (a prominent chemist) and his strongly held Christianity he rejected the traditional medical view of the humors. Instead he proposed a system of treatment aimed at getting to the root of diseases with the use of chemical spirits and cordials. According to Walwyn, traditional medicine was wrongly based on thousand year old rules and not scientific observation. He argued that traditional treatments such as bleeding were dangerous and didn't work, but were also un-Christian because they were an attack on the body. This volume has a section attacking traditional medicine, a description of the treatments that he devised to replace it (without ingredients), and a list of case studies in which he demonstrated the failure of traditional medicine and the success of his treatments. At the back of the book is the address where his treatments could be purchased, although this system of medicine did not prove popular in the long term. |
| Categories: | Title pages |
| Catalogue record: | |
| Date of original image publication: | 01/01/1681 |
| Colour: | Monochrome |
| Subject headings: | |
| Rights : | Copyright Discovery Library 2008 |
| Publisher: | Discovery Library |