Keep taking the tablets

     It's Burns' Day today, but the poet gets a mention here in a context other than his work. Though it's his birth that's celebrated with much stabbing of haggis and mashing of neeps and tatties, it was his death which cropped up in the comprehensive and informative The Healers: A History of Medicine in Scotland, which I've just read. In common with other famous men of his day such as Hume and Boswell, Burns turned to the 'intellectual' spa at Moffat for relaxation and therapy. He also sought the stimulating properties of sea-bathing and patronised a "shabby resort" at Brow Hill on the Solway Firth where during his final illness caused by a leaking heart valve, "he waded daily up to his armpits in the sea but died a week after finishing this treatment"!

    While the book is a scholarly account of its subject, it is also full of anecdote and fascinating facts. For instance, I didn't know that Robert the Bruce had leprosy, or that in the mid 18th. century one 'health holiday' in vogue was "retreating to a simple life in the country and drinking only the whey from goats' milk.....In 1740 in Glasgow in July it was recorded that all the ministers were absent, being 'at the goat's whey' ".

    As to drug treatment, although the use of extract of toad had been phased out, millipede powder (!) remained in the Pharmacopoeia until 1800, and the growth of patent medicines made by the forerunners of today's pharmaceutical industry meant that a gullible (or desperate) public bought such concoctions as Bell's Fairy Cure for pain relief, Dr. Collie's Ointment and Rollos Remedy for Piles "which on analysis showed 99% fat and 'a small quantity of very dark stuff' ".

     What I found particularly interesting and already knew something of was the rise and immense influence of the University of Edinburgh's Medical School. My grandfather studied there in the 1920s as did his uncle in the 1880s, but formal teaching went back to the 1600s and in a less regulated manner in the city to much earlier. From the Scottish capital the doctors went far out into the world: "the medical department of the College of Philadelphia [apparently the first in the US] was designed and staffed entirely by Edinburgh graduates.....The second....King's College New York, now Columbia University, opened in 1767. The moving spirit in this venture was an Edinburgh graduate...and four of the six founder professors were from Edinburgh". The list goes on. 

    Edinburgh was also the first medical school to admit a woman when Sophia Jex-Blake enrolled in 1869, though the lady students' path was not an easy one and it was to be much later before women enjoyed the same teaching as men.   

     By the way, the book is published by a local publisher, Mercat Press, and has a particularly striking cover and jacket design, don't you think?

Comments

[dovegreyreader]

Fascinating looking book,I'm currently reading Hubbub, Filth, Stench and Noise in England and finding it so interesting.I suspect I shall start a little reading project on the history of medicine any day now I've seen this.

[Alison]

oh this book looks like a must have, especially given my morbid fascination with health and medicine at the moment ;-)
we are putting off our burns supper and stabbing of the haggi until tomorrow, as number one son, who is the real haggis addict in this house us away for a sleepover tonight. better late than never.

[tara]

Karen, you have such a unique and beautiful way of photographing books. Very interesting post, and I love the cover of that book.

[Harri]

Is House in this book?I think not!
would it be helpful to a young medical student?

[Margaret Powling]

Today's Cornflower notes brings to mind a book in my collection which I simply cannot bear to read: Post-Mortem Examinations. It is by Professor Rudolph Virchow and has been translated from the German by Dr T P Smith. It was pubilshed in 1880 and it begins - the only bit I've read - when Prof. Virchow describes autopsies in 1844, when he was an assistant, which were "unmethodically performed." I expect it is a fascinating book should I have the stomach to read further! I've no idea where this book came from. I found it in my late mother's collection and can only suspect it came from her late bother's collection, but anyone could have given it to her! It has a name plate of Clinton T Dent (which sounds American) and then another owner has signed his name: Franklin Alexander Croxon. The full title of this book is: A Description and Exploration of the Method of Performing Post-Mortem Examinations in the dead-house of the Berlin Charite (sorry I can't do an accent on the e) Hospital. Perhaps one day I will feel strong enough to read it! I am sure your book is much more readable!