Description
Before Modern Medicine: Diseases & Yesterday Remedies – by Elizabeth Briggs & Colin Briggs – 1998
Book Description
Elizabeth Briggs and Colin Briggs have researched archival documents to produce a news illustrated guide to understanding how our ancestors dealt with illness and disease. The book will enable family historians to unravel the mysteries of death certificates and explain the development of our current health care. Names for diseases and treatments formerly in common use are discussed together with the evolution of clinical skills in diagnosing diseases. The history of medications and cures used to treat the sick in earlier years are presented. Many traditional herbal treatments are discussed and their adverse effects with current use identified. Charts are included to assist the family historian in gathering data. An easy to use glossary explaining terms in the text is provided together with a detailed index. Topics discussed in this book include:
- Medicine in earlier times e.g. Greek, Roman, Middle Ages, from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries;
- How Medicine has improved our quality of life since the nineteenth century;
- Evolution of hospitals, and health care professions e.g. physicians, surgeons, midwives, nurses, optometrists…..;
- Alternative medicine, homeopathy, osteopathy, herbal remedies, holistic medicine, aromatherapy…..;
- Sickness & causes of death, apoplexy, bubonic plague, cholera, influenza…;
- Virgin soil diseases from archival records, e.g. measles, tuberculosis….;
- Epidemics and pandemics;
- Impact of disease on the life of Hudson’s Bay Company employees, e.g. scurvy, smallpox…;
- Childbirth and abortions in earlier times;
- Hudson’s Bay Company medical journals diagnosis, evolution of clinical skills, patient histories, treatment of complaints, herbal remedies…..;
- First Nation treatment of diseases, herbal remedies, traditions, treatments at HBC forts;
- Resources from the HBC Archives, Provincial Archives & National Archives;
- Early medicines, their evolution, their use their dangers to health their current usage;
- Examples of typical remedies together with their original recipes;
- Examples of death certificates from Canada, the United States & the British Isles;
- Internet addresses and mailing addresses of resources for a genealogists’ further research;
- Glossary of terms used in documents, detailed index & Bibliography;
About the Author(s)
Elizabeth Briggs and Colin Briggs
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