A hundred years ago, the Book of Medicine would have helped to guided anyone in the household capable of reading in the arts of care giving, preventive maintenance and even healing.  Today, every facet of the medical world has a specialization level associated with it from the level of medical assistant to general practice doctors to surgeons.

These days it also takes a lot more effort.  There are medical assistant school options that provide medical assistant training in courses that can be completed in less than a few months for under a thousand dollars.

The Book of Medicine was written to provide the general tools that your average person might be confronted with in a health emergency or even to prevent one.  Times have changed significantly and the opportunities to help people in many ways have become greater in number and easier to grab.

Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:

• Typhoid Poison from a Well
  
  

  Typhoid Poison from a Well.  — in a report of the American public health Association, Dr. Austin Flynn gives an account of an outbreak of typhoid fever in Vermont which it was possible to trace, in the most circumstantial way, to the poisoning of a well in some such method as has been described.  The young man traveling through the region by stagecoach was taken ill, and, when he could go no further, was left in a tavern and a little hamlet to be cared for, his illness soon proved to be typhoid fever.  A small watercourse, a shallow valley, by the village into two portions, each of which consisted of half a dozen houses or less.  In a few days new cases of the fever made their appearance in that part of the hamlet which the tavern along — every house, in fact, but one was invaded with this disease — whilst on the other side of the stream not a case occurred.  It appears that the tavern well, which was the only one up on that side of the village, furnish the water supply to all the families belonging there but one.  That one family had had a quarrel with the landlord of the hotel, and consequently deserted the tavern well for a more distant supply of drinking water, and so escape swallowing the specific poison of typhoid fever in the water by which all their neighbors were stricken down.

   

  In case you’re wondering, typhoid fever is spread by people that shed typhoid bacteria area this can happen when they handle food or drinking water that other people consume, or when the bacteria is exhausted into a sewage system that contaminate the water supply.  So it is possible that the people that became sick from typhoid fever in this example, became sick from close proximity with a very sick traveler, in addition to the pollution of that traveler with the water supply.  We rarely think of these problems today when we book time in las vegas suites or at a beech cottage, but the bacteria could still be propogated by people handling food. This is one of the prime reasons why people should wash their hands. Due to water treatment procedures, we are currently fortunate to have less exposure to contaminated drinking water, however when sewer lines break in coastal areas and people swim in the ocean near these breaks, the risk could go up.

  It is also very interesting to note, that in this passage a health association that Dr. Flynn worked with was noted as opposed to just a name.  This is a distinct improvement, and I think the first time it has occurred in 158 pages!

• NATURAL POSITION OF CHILD AT TIME OF BIRTH
  
  

  This beautiful and effective plate shows the natural position of the child at the time of birth.  It is technically called the presentment of the fœtus for birth.  Of the presentment’s there are many varieties, whose study is most interesting to the obstetrician.  Some of them give rise to very difficult and dangerous delivery.  When the presentment is natural, as in the figure, the comfort of the mother is increased and the doctor’s anxiety is modulated.

   

  First off, the plate that this section refers to is located in our section on chart 2.  Here is the specific picture in question. 

  

  Second,that lasthave sense that talks about the anxiety of the doctor, I think that could be misconstrued a couple different ways.  It could appear that the author is more worried about the doctor than the mother.  That was my initial interpretation.

  It could also be, that the author was trying to tell the reader, that it’s okay to be anxious or you should be anxious if the fetus is not in the ideal position at childbirth.This could be some sort of hidden warning.It could also be something to tell doctors to relax if things are lined up correctly.

  At this time, most babies were delivered at home.If a doctor was present, that was actually something.There really wasn’t a great deal that they could do though if things went seriously wrong. 

  In our modern era we are so used to having medical professionals on hand to cover every little thing from corrective eye surgery to a nose job and we don’t think about these things. Furthermore, medical services of the specialized nature are becoming close in common. If I need to find a charlotte cosmetic dentist to fix my smile, I can drive 20 miles down the road and find one.

  Back then, you are doing good field drive a buggy 20 miles down the road to find a general practice doctor.

• Stagnant Water
  
  

  Stagnant Water. — stagnant water is, from the large quantity of organic matter in a decomposing state which it holds in suspension or solution, exceedingly unfitted for drinking and culinary purposes, no matter how transparent it may appear; and it should, in consequence, he carefully avoided whenever running water can possibly be procured. Pond-water, Canal-water, ditch-water and marsh-water all come under this category, and should be scrupulously shunned, under penalty of suffering from fever and ague, dysentery, typhoid fever, and many other dangerous maladies.

  Almost as if to emphasize my last point about my distaste for the excessive use of punctuation in the form of hyphens, the author almost seems to throw it in my face with this particular section. If I were driving a car through the cornfields of Illinois where I was born, and I was hampered in my journey due to the excessive bugs that tend to plaster windshields and evening, this would be akin to what the author is doing here only if I was suddenly swatted with a car covers sized bug, which after living in Illinois for many years is something that I’m sure exists.