New Warren's household physician, enlarged and revised, being a brief description ... of all the diseases of men, women and children

Front matter

Pass yCZl Book Mi '~ . r-

C0TCRIG I rr DEPOSIT.

CU^y

Preface

This book is written for the people. It is based on the assumption that every man — the mechanic, the farmer, and the day laborer, as well as the professional man — has a right to all the knowledge he is capable of acquiring, on all subjects, — medicine not excepted. The book aims, therefore, to popularize and adapt to the many what has been claimed as belonging only to the few.

I do not hesitate to avow that my sympathies, as a man, are with the great masses, who may be called the bone and muscle of the race. They are, in the main, more shrewd, more endowed with common sense, more simple and true in their natural instincts, and consequently less perverted, than those who claim more refinement and a higher place in the social scale.

" All men," says Hippocrates, one of the great fathers of medicine, " ought to be acquainted with the medical art. I believe that knowledge of medicine is the sister and companion of wisdom." Such knowledge would shield the many from the impositions of quackery. No one, I venture to say, who reads this book thoroughly, will be often imposed upon thereafter by quack nostrums, or quack doctors. Every man's physical organization is his own ; and he is charged with the responsibility of taking care of it. To do this properly, he needs knowledge of it ; and to withhold this from him is another form of the old oppression, which decreed knowledge and power to the few, and ignorance and obedience to the many.

In accordance with the design of the work, it has been written in plain, simple English, and brought within the comprehension of all who have medium powers of mind.

In preparing this book, a great number of authors have been carefully consulted, to whom I acknowledge large indebtedness ; yet the work is not a mere compilation. In dealing with each disease, I have aimed to sketch a brief pen-and-ink portrait, so like it that every reader shall know the original whenever he sees it ° 3 and then to give, in the fewest words, the best treatment. ■ No work of the sort has ever explained the reasons, or given the whys and wherefores of medicine to anything like the extent of this ; nor has any one been so extensively illustrated. The engravings have been, with few exceptions, done expressly for this work. The colored lithographs and manikins are inserted at great expense, and add much to the value of the book.

I. W.

SECOND PREFACE.

The Household Physician was written in the belief that the people were ready and waiting for a popular medical work based on liberal principles ; and that one hundred and forty thousand copies have already been sold is a sufficient evidence that the belief was well-founded — many persons assuring the publishers that fifty or one hundred dollars would be no temptation for them to part with the copy they have if they could not obtain another. Such an extensive sale of so large a book, with the demand constantly increasing, shows its value.

For these evidences of public favor the Publishers are not ungrateful or unmindful of corresponding duties on their part. A chapter is now added, therefore, on "Old Age and its Diseases," — a subject never before introduced into any popular treatise on medicine, and very rarely, indeed, into any medical book. Great pains have been taken in preparing it, and we sincerely hope that many fathers and mothers will, in future years, be kindly remembered in consequence of the suggestions it contains. Also a chapter on new popular Gymnastics, illustrated with many cuts.

The Publishers.

THIRD PREFACE.

The Household Physician, now so well known throughout the English and German-speaking world, again appears before the public, printed from entirely new plates, revised and improved in accordance with the progress of medical science of the present day.

Old, obsolete matter has been discarded, and only those methods and remedies of olden times have been preserved to which, though numerous, recent discoveries have found nothing superior.

Much new information has been added, including articles on Russian and Turkish baths at home, Drowning, and on Diseases of the Nervous System peculiar to modern times. The illustrations have been supplemented by fine colored plates and manikins showing the arrangement of the various organs of the body, the muscles, arteries, veins, and nerves. New colored plates of medicinal herbs have also been added, thus giving a distinct idea, not only of the pathological seat of many maladies, but of many of the sources from whence are derived their specific remedies.

The prescription list has been most carefully revised, and the old heroic doses of opium in its various forms have been superseded by milder narcotics and sedatives. Mercury no longer shows its hideous features on these pages, except as it is to be given in syphilitic affections. The work now fairly competes in rich information with any newer system of popular medicine, and may be relied on, as ever before, for accuracy, best advice, and the most modern medical customs.

The Publishers.

Table Of Contents

Page

Physiological Laws of Life and Health — Hygiene .... 54

Married Ladies' Perpetual Calendar ....... 443