The Sick Man's Friend. Being a Plain, Practical Medical Work; Designed for The Use of Families and Individuals on Vegetable, or Botanical Principles. In Four Parts.

The Sick Man's Friend. Being a Plain, Practical Medical Work; Designed for The Use of Families and Individuals on Vegetable, or Botanical Principles. In Four Parts. Sanborn, P.E. 1836. Taunton, N.J.: Sanborn, P.E.

12mo.(4" x 6.5") 252 pp. Full brown tree calf. Spine with six gilt rule bands, gilt lettering to black leather in second compartment. All edges marbled, marbled endpapers. Edgewear, corners bumped and rubbed with tiny loss to tips, head and foot of spine with leather repair, chipped with small loss (see pic). Bords lightly scuffed and rubbed. Foxing throughout, heavier towards front and rear of textblock. Pencil corrections to several recipes, presumably due to some of the "harder" drugs being replaced with less poisonous ones. A relatively scarce title.

Peter Elkins Sanborn’s The Sick Man’s Friend, published at Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1836. Sanborn described the book as a practical medical manual intended for families and individuals who wished to understand and treat illness according to “vegetable, or botanical principles.” Bibliographic records identify Sanborn as Peter Elkins Sanborn (1796–1845) and classify the work under popular medicine, herbs, botanical medicine, materia medica, and medicinal plants.

The book belongs to the vigorous nineteenth-century American movement that challenged mineral-based and heroic medicine in favor of remedies derived largely from plants. Its materia medica discusses individual botanicals and their supposed therapeutic uses, including such plants as hyssop, elecampane, golden seal, burdock, butternut, and others. Sanborn’s title-page motto makes his position explicit, asserting that the vegetable remedies found throughout nature would eventually supersede the use of minerals.

For a modern collector, the volume is particularly interesting as a record of American botanical medicine, domestic healthcare, herbalism, and the nineteenth-century debate over competing systems of medical treatment. The pencil corrections found in several recipes add another layer of interest, apparently showing an earlier reader actively modifying some formulations, possibly substituting ingredients believed to be safer or preferable.

A relatively scarce and appealing piece of early American medical history, especially suited to collections centered on herbalism, medical botany, domestic medicine, alternative medical movements, or nineteenth-century materia medica.