The Works, Literary, Moral, and Medical, of Thomas Percival, M.D.: Volume 3 To Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of his Life and Writings, and a Selection from his Literary Correspondence

A physician and medical reformer enthused by the scientific and cultural progress of the Enlightenment as it took hold in Britain, Thomas Percival (1740–1804) wrote on many topics, including public health and demography. His influential publication on medical ethics is considered the first modern formulation. In 1807, his son Edward published this four-volume collection of his father's diverse work. Some of the items here had never been published before, including a selection of Percival's private correspondence and a biographical account written by Edward. Volume 3 contains the first two parts of Essays Medical and Experimental, the revised edition of which has been reissued separately in this series in one volume in addition to his Medical Ethics (1803). The essays reflect Percival's wide range of interests, such as the application of philosophical methods to medical questions, the importance of accurate record keeping, and the risks of inoculating very young children against smallpox.

Advertisement; Part I: Preface; The empiric, or man of experience; The dogmatic, or rationalist; Experiments and observations on astringents and bitters; On the uses and operation of blisters; An inquiry into the resemblance between chyle and milk; Experiments and observations on water, particularly the hard pump water of Manchester; On the disadvantages of inoculating children in early infancy; On the efficacy of external applications in the angina maligna, or ulcerous sore throat; Part II: Preface; Observations and experiments on the Columbo root; On the preparation, culture, and use of the orchis root; Experiments and observations on the waters of Buxton and Matlock; Observations on the medicinal uses of fixed air; On the antiseptic and sweetening powers, and on the varieties of factitious air; On the noxious vapours of charcoal; On the atrabilis; On the septic quality of sea salt; On coffee; Select histories of diseases with remarks.