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Domestic medicine


Domestic medicine or domestic health care is the behavioral, nutritional and health care practices, hygiene included, performed in the household and transmitted from one generation to the other.

Such knowledge is complementary to the specialized skills of doctors and nurses. Consisting of preventive and curative tools, often related to first aid and medical herbs uses, the concept of domestic medicine, was first made popular in Western countries by Scottish physician William Buchan in the 18th century, and was spread by domestic economy manuals through the following two hundred years. A prime example of this was Buchan's own Domestic Medicine, a manual for at home health care, broken into sections regarding infant health and general diseases. The purpose of developing this concept was to expand the reach of medicine so every person can understand it and is able to follow it. An example of such a manual was written by English homeopath John Henry Clarke in the 19th century, A Dictionary of Domestic Medicine and Homeopathic Treatment.

During the late 18th century, after the publication of William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, the concept of domestic medicine explored new ideas that changed the way most people perceived medicine. This was an era in which the majority of health care was provided by individuals who were not considered physicians. These people were often close friends, neighbors, or family relatives of the patient. They were not formally trained by modern medical standards of the time but gained their knowledge of medicine by learning from their predecessors. Therefore, the spread of domestic medicinal practices served as a resource for better health care for those who could not afford a physician or did not have access to more technologically advanced practices of medicine. Yet this does not mean that domestic medicine was born with the publication of Domestic Medicine. Domestic medicine has been in practice from as far back as the early colonial era but Buchan’s publication distributed this knowledge out of the hands of the few and to the general public. This was a significant trend as medicine previously had been physician-centered.

Domestic medicine provided a platform for the public to easily access medical care. People from the lower, working-class, in particular, fell under this subgroup of the population who reaped most of the benefits from this style of medicinal practices. Whether it be due to economic reasons, personal preference, or just the fact that no person in their proximity had been trained in modern forms of medicine, they relied on the care from people they trusted. Hence, domestic medicine prompted common folk with a limited knowledge of medicine to care for others using the resources available to them. In many cases, these care givers were mothers as they were in charge of caring for the home and household. Thus, the expansion of domestic medicine played a key role in education not only for the commoner but also women, a group that had previously been limited in their medical involvement. Ironically, though Buchan’s book ended up empowering women, his personal views towards them were less encouraging. He particularly opposed nurses and midwives for prohibiting physicians to treat children or attend births until. He mentioned, “the good women had exhausted all their skill and his [the physicians] attendance could only serve to divide the blame and appease the disconsolate parents.”


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