Manual Sanitario, o Medicina y Farmacia Domesticas..

Mexico City: Tipografia de R. Rafael, 1848. Very good.. 295pp. Contemporary Mexican calf, spine gilt with leather label. Light wear to extremities, heavier to corners; label a bit chipped. Light foxing and wear to text. Second edition, after the first of the previous year. A popular manual for hygiene and the diagnosing and curing of diseases. Translated from the French and published in Mexico three subsequent years, the present work provides advice on the means to stay well and prevent disease. Each tidbit of information is helpfully numbered (345 in all), with the opening sections being devoted to health and hygiene with useful suggestions such as avoiding drafts and cold, damp rooms; there follow several sections on various types of diseases with symptoms, causes, and recipes for curatives. The work covers everything from croup in children to heart palpitations to epileptic fits to the flux. The final half of the book is an alphabetical dictionary of afflictions, followed by an index. The author was a French chemist and physician who published several works on domestic medicine, including the original of this text in 1845. It is rare in all its Mexican editions. We locate copies of the first edition of 1847 at the University of Toronto and the Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico; one copy of the present edition located at the University Complutense de Madrid; and two copies of the third edition of 1849 found at the University of Texas and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.