Main description:

After training as an apothecary and surgeon, Jonathan Pereira (1804-53) taught materia medica for many years. His lectures at the medical school in London's Aldersgate Street were highly successful and formed the basis for the first edition of his major encyclopaedic work on medicinal substances. A pioneering text in the field of pharmacology, Pereira's work, which he subsequently updated in further editions, provided pharmacists and medical professionals with a more rigorous scientific understanding of the drugs and remedies they prescribed. After Pereira's death, medical jurist Alfred Swaine Taylor (1806-80) and physician George Owen Rees (1813-89) prepared this revised and expanded fourth edition, interspersed with instructive woodcuts. Volume 1 (1854) includes discussion of 'physical remedies' such as heat, cold and electricity, and 'hygienic remedies' of diet, exercise and climate. It then focuses on general pharmacological practice and specific drugs, describing the medicinal properties of inorganic compounds.

Contents:

Preface to the fourth edition; Prolegomena; Part I. Psychical or Mental Remedies: 1. External affections of the mind; 2. Internal affections of the mind; Part II. Physical but Imponderable Remedies: 1. Light; 2. Heat; 3. Cold; 4. Electricity; 5. Magnetism; Part III. Hygienic Remedies: 1. Food; 2. Exercise; 3. Climate; Part IV. Mechanical and Surgical Remedies; Part V. Pharmacological Remedies: 1. General pharmacology; 2. Special pharmacology.