Saturday, June 19, 2021

The Old Root and Herb Doctor: Now Available!



This fine little work is rather unique as far as 19th century herbals go; it contains the normal materia medica and preparations for various ailments, but also includes a short section on the caloric nutritional value of certain common foodstuffs, even including the digestion time of the same. In another odd inclusion, it compiles a list of commonly encountered poisons and their antidotes- normally warm water for vomiting, a stomach pump, and various counteracting agents. That section is almost surely geared mainly towards parents of small children.

While the work was, by and large, well made, it included numerous typographical mistakes which I had to correct, and its non-alphabetical content at the end indicates to me that it was either hastily edited or not edited at all prior to being printed.

It should be noted that the work contains contemporary Euro-American Thompsonian simples and has nothing to do with "Natives." This was a marketing gimmick.

73 pages.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, just raising awareness to a couple of minor punctuation issues present on pg64.

    On lines:
    Canker Root (end of line comma)
    Sumac (superfluous period mid sentence)

    Keep the cat off keyboard.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As a suggestion Tarl, consider setting up a erratum/corrigendum section within this blog site to collate reader submissions.

    ReplyDelete