The Family Adviser; or, A Plain and Modern Practice of Physic; Calculated for the Use of Families who have not the Advantages of a Physician, and accommodated to the Diseases of America. . . . the Fifth Edition. To Which is Annexed, Mr. Wesley’s Primitive Physic, Revised.
New-York: Published by Daniel Hitt and Thomas Ware, for the Methodist Connexion in the United States, J. C. Totten, Printer, 1814. Fifth edition of the Wilkins; stated twenty-seventh edition of the Wesley. 2 vols in 1, as published, 12mo, original calf, gilt-ruled spine, 144; 142, [2] pages. Some light foxing throughout and a little light marginal damp-staining toward the rear of the colume; boards a little bowed, some minor wear; a very good copy. Item #18903
A popular early American home remedy book, first published in Philadelphia in 1793 (the year Wilkins received his M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania); the association with the popular Wesley Primitive Physic, which was in place from the first publication, no doubt helped Wilkins’s sales. Wesley first published the Primitive Physic in 1742, intending it as a popular medical manual and corrective to the abstruse or heroic measures of English physicians;the populist simplicity and empirical basis of the work (and the implication of a sort of return to an Edenic health) parallels Wesley’s Methodism and anticipates Thomsonianism. Wilkins however, who suggests in this manual liberal doses of salts, opium, calomel, etc., was later to butt heads with the Thomsonians. Atwater 3785; Austin 2051. Early ownership signature dated 1816 on the front paste-down; small flaw on the front free endpaper.
Price: $400.00