William Salmon (1644–1713), advertising himself as "Professor of Physick", was a writer of medical texts that savor to the modern eye of quackery.[1] His Medicina Practica, with the Claris Alcymiae, (3 vols. London, 1692) reveals its scope in its subtitle:
Practical Physick. Shewing the Method of Curing the most Usual Diseases Happening to Humane bodies. As all Sorts of Aches and Pains, Apoplexies, Agues, Bleeding, Fluxes, Gripings, Wind, Shortness of breath, Diseases of the Breast and Lungs, Abortion, Want of Appetite, Loss of the use of Limbs, Cholick, or Belly-ache, Appositions, Thrushes, Quinsies, Deafness, Bubo's, Cachexis, Stone in the Reins, and Stone in the Bladder... To which is added, The philosophick Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Kalid Persicus, Geber Arabs, Artesius Longævus, Nicholas Flammel, Roger Bacon, and George Ripley. All Translated out of The best Latin Editions, into English...[2]
The vademecum combines medicine with the pseudo-science of alchemy, fore-runner of chemistry, in a mix that is typical of the Early Modern approach.
Salmon followed with the Pharmacopeia Londinensis. Or, the New London Dispensatory, (6 vols. London, 1696). His portrait by Robert White (1700) was noted by George Vertue.[3]
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