Author: Sir John Floyer

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13:

'Advice to a Young Physician'offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of post Restoration and early eighteenth-century medicine. For the first time, a document prepared by the Lichfield physician, Sir John Floyer for his grandson has been retrieved from the Library of The Queen's College Oxford. Transcribed, and edited, it is now published in this attractive and accessible form. The document itself is prefaced by a very informative introduction and illustrated by a great range of well-chosen and reproduced images. Floyer was in residence at Oxford during the great burst of scientific activity that followed the Restoration, and had links with Boyle and Robert Hooke, among other pioneers of modern science. In Floyer's thinking, as demonstrated in this book, we see a contest or mingling between archaic ideas (such as the more or less medieval notion that appropriate medicines reveal themselves by their tastes) and pioneering and modern conceptions. Floyer remarks, for instance, that England lacks hospital training for doctors and recommends that his grandson go abroad to gain first-hand clinical experience. He was one of the first to tabulate medical results and - most famously - to pioneer the taking of the pulse. The book contains three central chapters in which Floyer offers remarks on what we would now call the ethics of medical practice. These are illuminating and would still, in many instances hold good today