The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Medical theory and practice of the 1700s developed rapidly, as is evidenced by the extensive collection, which includes descriptions of diseases, their conditions, and treatments. Books on science and technology, agriculture, military technology, natural philosophy, even cookbooks, are all contained here. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library T055638 London: printed by John Richardson, for George Nicol, 1794. lxvii, [1],575, [1]p., plates: port.; 4°

Kaufman examines the training and status of British military surgeons during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Their management of the sick and wounded during the wars with France leading up to and including the Peninsular War is also described. He concludes with an analysis of the medical problems associated with the Crimean War. Using important contemporary texts, Kaufman describes the personalities who served in the British Army Medical Department during the late 18th and 19th centuries, when diseases caused a much higher mortality than injuries sustained in battle. Many military surgeons were only poorly trained, and the management of the sick and wounded only gradually improved over this period despite significant advances in medicine, surgery, and hygene. Government spending cuts after the Peninsular War greatly depleted the medical service of the army so that by the time of the Crimean War it was unable to cope with a European-style war. Deficiencies were recognized and, in the case of the medical services, this led to the establishment of the Army Medical School in 1860. This analysis should be of particular interest to serving military medical officers and to historians and other researchers interested in the management of 18th and 19th century armies in times of peace and war.

The significance of the Regius Chair of Military Surgery that existed in the University of Edinburgh from 1806–55 is discussed in detail for the first time in this book. The first holder, John Thomson, also held the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh's Chair of Surgery from 1804. This Regius Chair was the only one of its type in Britain for almost 50 years, and was established during the Peninsular War. After the second holder, Sir George Ballingall, died in 1855, the Government withdrew its funding support. This Chair introduced numerous Edinburgh medical students to Military Surgery, and many who attended subsequently entered the Medical Service of either the Army, Navy or East India Company. Large numbers of medical officers in the Public service also attended. These courses were popular, and the topics covered were not discussed elsewhere in the Edinburgh medical curriculum.

Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), commonly called Paracelsus, was both one of the most original medical thinkers of the sixteenth century and was the man who made opium (as laudanum), arsenic, copper sulphate, iron, lead, mercury, potassium sulphate, and sulphur part of the pharmacopoeia. A man of many parts, but a pioneer chemist, Paracelsus can be regarded as the originator of a body of work which was the precursor of chemical pharmacology and therapeutics. To no small extent he stands, therefore, as a father figure of the modern pharmaceutical industry. Today's physician who wants to look at that industry since the days of Paracelsus and weigh the great gains against the problems soon encounters difficulties. To diminish them, this Enquiry approaches its subject from historical principles. This gives increased perspective to questions asked late in the boo- these questions being prompted by medical practice outside the industry and some twenty years of drug development activity within it. In antiquity medicines often seem to have been used as part of magic and primitive man thought disease to be due to supernatural forces which he could influence. The legacy remains - and in trying to sort out what is rational in our use of drugs today we have to separate our small bits of science from the ancient magic and from modern commercial pressures and conditioning.