PREFACE.

This New Edition of the Domestic Medicine, comes before thepublic with fresh claims upon their attention. It has undergone athorough revision, with considerable additions and improvements.The little obsolete or irrelevant matter, scattered here and therein the preceding edition, has been expunged, and its place suppliedwith information of a more useful and more recent nature, whichit was deemed essentially necessary not to omit, in order that abook so familiar to all ranks of society, might keep pace with thevarious improvements and opinions which have taken place of lateyears in medical science.

In addition to the variety of new and interesting subjects abovealluded to, numerous prescriptions, in English, with the Latintranslation, selected from the practice of eminent medical practi-tioners, have been added, though in such a manner as not to inter-fere with the text of the author, he'"^- ^¡>¡jendod at the bottom ofthe page, where thev ¡>.-v referred to from the body of the work.It ought, however, to have been previously mentioned, that, wit!the introduction of the prescriptions, and some additional historiesof disease, an important alteration has been made in the distribu-tion of the original matter, in order to give it more an appearanceof method, conformable with modern nosological arrangement.

To the diseases of children, which, instead of commencing thework, as in the older, and still in the spurious editions extant, standtowards the end, is added much valuable medical instruction. Thediseases of women are treated of at large, as well as those which oc-cur during pregnancy ; to these is added the management of lying-in women, as well as the necessary treatment to be adopted duringthe piocess of a natural labour, than which a more useful feature,for various assignable and obvious reasons, could not possibly havebeen introduced into a work that professes to treat of DomesticMedicine in a simple and comprehensive manner.

The dietetic, or that branch of medicine which has the regula-tion of diet for object, either in health or disease, as will readily beperceived, is placed at the commencement of the work ; then fol-low the various diseases, nearly in the same succession as first laiddown by the author.

Another most important feature to those already mentioued, willbe found in the toxicological, or that part which treats of the. dif-ferent classes of poisons, (mineral, vegetable, aerial, and animal,)a subject every person ought, in some measure, to be acquaintedwith ; a« these deleterious substances are not unfrequently takenby accident, as well as designedly ; and their effects are often so¡hidden an I violent, as not to admit of delay, or al'ow time to pro»Cure the assistance of medical men.