A Treatise on the Medicinal Leech (1816)

Description

Bloodletting by leech was, in 1816, an everyday medical act, and the leech itself a commodity to be bought, kept and nursed. James Rawlins Johnson, of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh, wrote what the trade lacked: a proper account of the animal — its natural history, its anatomy dissected and engraved, the diseases that killed it in captivity, and how to keep a stock alive.Dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks, it is a small classic of the moment when medicine began to look at its instruments as living things.This is a faithful print-on-demand facsimile of the 1816 London (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown) edition, reproduced in full from a library copy. The historical text is reproduced without modification; only the format, margins and legibility have been reset for modern printing.