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Lot 100•
MEDICINE Professional medical recipe book, covering subjects such as "The Valerian Mixture" ("...The Valerian Root is warm and aromatic, and of great efficacy in all Nervous and Hysteric Complaints: Consequently 'tis no wonder it is such a favourite of the present practice..."), RECIPE BOOK BELONGING TO A PROMINENT BATH PHYSICIAN, [late 18th century]
27 November 2018, 13:00 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £2,000 inc. premium
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MEDICINE
Professional medical recipe book, covering subjects such as "The Valerian Mixture" ("...The Valerian Root is warm and aromatic, and of great efficacy in all Nervous and Hysteric Complaints: Consequently 'tis no wonder it is such a favourite of the present practice..."), "Nervous Colic" ("...For this prescription we are obliged to the famous Dr Bate Physician to K. Charles the Second. The composition perhaps has not its equal in the whole extent of Medicine for procuring Ease in the most excruciating pains; which it not only relieves by its opiate powers, but by its alternating qualities promotes at the same time the Discharge of the humours..."), "Dropsy" ("...Gambage acts most powerfully on the humours..."), etc., etc.; with, in another 18th century hand, some political ruminations on the state of Ireland on the verso of leaf 161, c.250 leaves written on one side only, spine broken into two sections but otherwise internally sound, original half calf, marble-paper covered boards, detached, 4to, [late eighteenth century]
Footnotes
RECIPE BOOK BELONGING TO A PROMINENT BATH PHYSICIAN, bearing the bookplate of Randle Wilbraham Falconer (1816-1881), twice Mayor of Bath, Physician to the Institute for Idiot Children, Bath, and to the Bath General or Mineral Water Hospital. He was author of The Baths and Mineral Waters of Bath, 1857, in which 'he argued that although drinking from the springs could have unpleasant side effects, they could "accelerate the pulse, increase temperature of the body, and excite the secretions" – frequently more rapidly and permanently "than might at first be anticipated"' (Anne Borsay, ODNB).
Judging from its clean condition, it seems likely that Falconer acquired the volume out of antiquarian interest, or possibly inherited it from his father Thomas Falconer, who studied medicine but never practised, or from his grandfather William Falconer (1744-1824), who also practised in Bath, 'counting among his patients the duke of Portland, Lord Chancellor Thurlowe, William Pitt, and Horatio Nelson' (Borsay). To judge from the handwriting, the volume appears to date from the late eighteenth century. It is of particular interest in that it demonstrates that the theory of humours persisted well into the nineteenth century, as well as in its citation of authorities that might by then have been thought distinctly old fashioned, such as George Bate, physician to both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II.