Pediatrics in an eighteenth century remedy book.

A manuscript home remedy book of several hundred pages in German, with entries from 1631 to 1861, was found in the Washington University School of Medicine Library some years ago. Two sections on diseases of children, from the early seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, have been translated and compared with both printed and manuscript pediatric works. People cited and geographicl places mentioned are discussed. The final conclusion reached is that the text is closer in tone and philosophy to the stream of manuscripts going back to classical times than it is to the printed book of its time. An appendix lists treatment of the wet-nurse in place of the child, and treatments for debility or wasting and pain in the abdomen, and traces these through classical and later manuscript sources.