Rare. OCLC records physical copies at BL, Cambridge and John Rylands only; Yale Medical and National Library of Medicine only in the USA.
A privately printed essays proposing a new treatment for tuberculosis (commonly known as consumption) involving the application of liniment or milk directly to the skin as well as a largely milk and vegetable based diet.
Richard Charles, in his short introduction notes that he has written the present essay with a view to minimising the risk of the deadly disease, “that often seized on the most beautiful part of the creation, that snatches the early hope of the fond parent; and tears from society man of its greatest ornaments” (p.4)
The author stresses that the disease has long been considered incurable, but proposes - based on practical experience and the reading of authorities such as John Fothergill - that the disease is related to the lymphatic system in the body and that through the application of liniment or milk applied directly to the skin (through application or a “waistcoat” device) it might be absorbed into the lymphatic system and help to cure tuberculosis. This treatment should also be accompanied by a diet consisting primarily of vegetables and milk:
“Rice and milk, or barley and milk, boiled, with a little sugar, is very proper food, ripe fruits roasted, baked, or boiled, are likewise proper, as goose or currant berry tarts, apples roasted or boiled in milk, &c. The jellies, conserves, and preserves, &c. or ripe subacid fruits, ought to be eat plentifully, as the jelly of currants, conserve of roses, preserved plums, cherries, &c. Wholesome air, proper exercise, and a diet consisting chiefly of these and other vegetables, with milk, is the only course that can be depended on in a beginning consumption. If the patient has strength and sufficient resolution to persist in this course, he will seldom be disappointed of a cure” (p.26)
Charles goes on to state:
“In a populous town in England, [footnoted as Sheffield] where consumptions are very common, I have frequently seen consumptive patients, who had been sent to the country, with orders to ride and live upon milk and vegetables, return in a few months quite plump, and free from any complaint. This indeed was not always the case, especially when the disease was hereditary, or far advanced, but it was the only method in which success was to be expected; where it failed I never knew medicine succeed.” (p.26-7)
When reviewed in The English Review the following year it was noted: “We wish much success to Mr. Charles’s prescription, but must acknowledge ourselves diffident to its efficacy” (1788).
Charles was also the author of: Observations on antimonial preparations. With a description of a new antimonial powder, of peculiar efficacy in fevers and inflammatory distempers; and singularly successful in the febrile diseases of children (London: printed for the author; and sold by G. Herdsfield, 1785).
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