Physicians Commonplace Book (1 results)

MANUSCRIPT IN INK. 8vo, ff. [92]; written in French and Latin in brown ink in a single neat hand; aside from some occasional spotting, clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary stiff vellum, flap with tie to lower board, edges sprinkled red; loss of vellum to lower cover, otherwise somewhat worn, with upper board slightly bowed; manuscript note on rear pastedown dated October 1, 1778. A very good example of a late eighteenth-century physician's commonplace book, compiled by a doctor in the Oise department of northern France, giving an insight into both the day-to-day medical practice of the owner and the reading of a country doctor of the time. Both aspects of the business of medicine are fully in evidence: we find remedies for fevers (with both pharmaceutical recipes and instructions for their preparation and use), and notes on, among other things, the preparation of a 'puissant diuretique', the treatment of an epidemic fever in 1764-5 by a Dr Renard, remedies for dropsy, recipes for purgatives, and various other broths, pomades, tisanes, and more. There are always reminders that this notebook is for the owner only; a treatment for dropsy, given to the compiler by a 'chevalier de St Louis', is noted as untested. But we are also reminded that medicine is a business; we find notes on visits to patients, and accounts of the charges made to them and payments received: 'à Courcelles, la femme de la moine 24'; 'Vely, Mde Pelé depuis le 8 mai juqu. 5 7bre 33 visites 148'. The bulk of the book, however, is taken up with accounts of what our physician has been reading. His interest in the classics is shown by numerous extracts (in Latin but often with French translations) from Virgil, Juvenal, Cicero, Seneca, and more. These classical extracts are followed by more contemporary ones, ranging from odes of Jean Baptiste Rousseau on the reign of Louis XVI to notes on religion, Arabs, despots and despotism, poverty, and the American Revolutionary War ('L'Europe attendoit cette revolution avec impatience'). Our doctor also reflects on the evolution of feudalism in England (the nation that knew first the injustices of ecclesiastical power, the limits of royal authority, and the abuses of feudal government; up until the reign of Henry VIII, she fought for nothing other than a choice of tyrants'), the Quakers of Pennsylvania and their role in the emancipation of enslaved people (drawing on Raynal), the duties of a physician with regard to religion, and the duties of a sovereign. Among the authors he cites and quotes are Buffon, Raynal, Boileau, and Puffendorf.