A 17th Century Renaissance
Man,
Dr William Salmon:
In which a 17th Century Mrs Beeton talks of religion,
cookery, medicine, dentistry, herbs and ever so much more
Copyright © 2004 Bruce Tober All Rights
Reserved
William Salmon, author of Ars Chirurgica - a Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Chirurgery (The Art of Surgery...) was what would today
be called a Renaissance Man, whose tastes ran to "the obscure". But he has also been called an empiric
("An unqualified or
dishonest practitioner; a charlatan").
Born 2 June 1644 (according to an inscription under his portrait in Ars
Anatomica, he studied and wrote a profusion of books on
medicine, surgery, anatomy, pharmacology, astronomy, gardening, cookery, astrology, religion and translated several
Latin medical classics into
English. |
Wm Salmon MD
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Salmon used the title of MD on his title pages, but according to Stanley
H. Johnston, Jr., Curator of Rare Books at The Holden Arboretum, "most writers doubt that he was entitled
to it. He still is somewhat difficult to assess since he is known to have amassed a 3,000 volume library containing
a many of the medical classics and produced several medical publications that were sufficiently erudite that his
critics have claimed they
were ghost-written for him."
Rupert Halliwell at SimsReed
Rare Books in London describes Salmon a "learned man, with
a taste for the obscure" and notes that his library, auctioned off after his death, "contained works
in French, Greek, Latin and Hebrew, on medicine and other subjects."
But his enemies asserted that his earliest education was from a charlatan with whom he travelled, and whose business
he eventually inherited. And he seems ill-inclined to prove them wrong. He lived at a time long before hospitals
had out-patient facilities. At this time "irregular practitioners" frequently lived near the gates of
St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Their patients were those who could not or would not be admitted to the
hospital.
According to Margaret Pelling's Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians and Irregular Practitioners
1550-1640, the education and qualifications of these
"unlicensed or irregular practitioners varied from women with no formal education, to men who were as well
qualified as any member of the College."
Many of them, Pelling explains, were barber-surgeons and apothecaries "who saw it as their right to practise
physic. Most if not all of these are likely to have been literate. Others were much-travelled, cosmopolitan scholars,
or religious refugees. Some of the irregulars were born outside England; many more (like the College members themselves)
qualified (or spent time) in non-English universities. The irregulars were arguably more cosmopolitan than the
College itself. The diversity of the irregulars reflects both medicine's usefulness as a portable skill in universal
demand, and the status of London as one of the largest, fastest-growing European capitals, a centre for services
such as medicine and law, and a focus of attraction for immigrants from the English provinces and continental Europe."
Salmon thus set up his stall near the Smithfield gate of St. Bartholomew's. It was there he "treated all diseases,
sold special prescriptions of his own, as well as drugs in general, cast horoscopes, and professed alchemy,"
according to Norman Moore in his article about Salmon in the OUP's Dictionary
of National Biography. It was while there, that in 1671
he published Synopsis Medicin, or a Compendium of Astrological,
Galenical, and Chymical Physick in three books.
Dedicated to other Salmon
The books, Moore claims, carry dedications intended specifically to add authority to what otherwise might be just
most writings of a quack. The first dedication is to Dr. Peter Salmon, a wealthy physician of the time, while the
third is to Thomas Salmon of Hackney. Although William "does not claim to be related to either," Moore
says, he was "endeavouring, obviously without their consent, to associate himself in the public eye with them".
Moore adds the laudatory verses by several scholars are prefixed. They cite the work as an admirable montage of
the works of Hermes, Hippocrates, Galen, and Paracelsus.
Richard Jones of the Golden Lion in Little Britain, the publisher of Synopsis
Medicin also published his art book, Polygraphice in 1672.
This was subtitled, "The arts of drawing, engraving, etching, limning, painting, washing, varnishing, gilding,
colouring, dying, beautifying and perfuming ... : To which also is added, I. The one hundred and twelve chymical
arcanums of Petrus Johannes Faber ... II. An abstract of choice chymical preparations, fitted for vulgar use, for
curing most diseases incident to humane bodies ..."
The book is actually an encyclopaedic collection of general information. Only the first section is devoted to the
art of painting. In that section Salmon concentrates on the basics an artist should has to know - anatomy, in particular
the muscles, and the body's correct proportions.
"If you be to draw a labouring man, you must without any regard to the season, represent him with raised limbs,
and strong muscles swelling and standing forth, sweating and burning, especially in such as carry burthens, draw
great weights, or use vehement leaping, walking, jesting with weapons, fencing and such like exercises," he
told his readers.
Besides the mechanical parts of art, descriptions are given of the ways of representing the passions and emotions
in portraiture. At the end Salmon advertises his pills, which are to be had for three shillings a box, and are
good for all diseases.
Polygraphice
instructs on various categories of painting. Salmon took the Neoplatonic view advising readers, "The work
of the painter is to express the exact imitation of natural things; wherein you are to observe the excellencies
and beauties of the piece, but to refuse its vices." It gave comprehensive, yet basic, instructions on how
to draw and paint a wide variety of subjects - figures, landscapes, animals, fruit, etc. This was just the information
apprentice painters learned firsthand from their masters. but now they could study and rehearse these concepts
and practices wherever and whenever the urge struck.
So comprehensive was it that the chapter entitled "To take the perfect draught of any Picture" illustrates
"eight different ways of making tracings from paintings or prints, for purposes of producing versions of the
same composition," says Carol Gibson-Wood in her article, "Picture consumption in London at the end of the seventeenth century" in The Art Bulletin.
"'Landscape' was introduced into modern English from Dutch towards the end of the sixteenth century and at
that time was exclusively a painter's term. A 'landscape' was not something which you could walk across or build
or buy. It was a Platonic Form; an ideal place beyond the everyday world of reality and sharing some qualities
with paradise itself," says Tom Turner in his Garden Design in the British Isles History and styles since
1650.
And for the artists amongst you, we have...
Artists at the time had "hoped to paint a perfect place on canvas
after detailed observation and deep reflection on the world as it appeared to their senses," and Polygraphice taught them,
"you are to observe the excellences and beauties of the piece but to refuse its vices." And, it said,
"by designing each part after that pattern which was perfect might at last present something perfect in the
whole". Salmon then provides a definition of landscape: "Landskip is that which appeareth in lines the
perfect vision of the earth, and all things thereupon, placed above the horizon, as towns, villages, castles, promontories,
mountains, rocks, valleys, ruins, woods, forests, chases, trees, houses, and all other buildings, both
beautiful and ruinous."
But, as has been said, Polygraphice isn't just about art, unless one considers the "curing" of baldness
to be a form of artistic expression. In the book's second edition (1673) Salmon wrote that baldness "is a
hard thing to cure." But that wasn't about to stop him trying. He
advised, "the following things are very good. Rub the head or bald places every morning very hard with a coarse
cloth, till it be red, anointing immediately after with Bear's grease: when ten or fifteen days are passed, rub
every morning and evening with a bruised Onion, till the bald places be red, then anoint with honey well mixed
with Mustard seed, applying over all a plaster of Labdanum mixed with mice dung, and powder of Bees : do this for
thirty days.
"If all the former fail," he continued, "bathe with a decoction of Bur-dock roots, made with a Lixivium
(of Salt of Tartar) two parts, and muskadel one part; immediately applying this Unguent : take Thapsi or Turbeth
one drachm (in powder) bear's grease one ounce, mix them, which use for sixty days; if this make not the hair come,
the defect is incurable."
Eight editions of the book were published between 1672 and 1701. Salmon claimed the book had sold more than 15,000
copies.
And on to a new publisher
The copy of this book on sale from Books at Star Dot Star is "The Second Volume" of the extremely scarce first edition. What
few references there are to this title refer to the first edition being 1699. However, the title page of this volume
is dated "M. DC. XCVIII." which to my certain knowledge translates to 1698. Various suggestions arise
as to this conundrum, the most convincing probably being a typographic error.
This volume contains pages 731 - 1352, comprised of Books 4-7 plus 18pp
table of contents for both volumes I and II. It contains Books 4 - 7 as follows: "Liber Quartus The Cure of
Wounds", "Liber Quintus The Cure of Ulcers", "Liber Sextus The Cure of Fractures", and
"Liber Septimus The Cure of Dislocations". The title page says the book discusses the above-mentioned
"cure[s] of" "shewing, Their various Names, Causes, Signs, Differences, Prognofticks, and feveral
Intentions of Curing; adapted to all Habits and Conftitutions of Body whatsoever. The whole Work, Galenically and
Chymically performed, The like yet never Publifhed in any Language whatfoever. By William Salmon, M. D. Living
at the Great Houfe by Black-Friers-Stairs, London. Printed by J. Dawks, in Great Carter-Lane, and sold by moft
bookfellers. M. DC. XCVIII."
This is followed by an advertisement for Ars Anatomica of, the Anatomy of the Human Body - in Nine Books also by Dr Salmon. There then follows "Tab I" through "Tab XII" which
are 12 full-page b&w plates showing the most interesting of Chirurgical Instruments and procedures.
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Surgical Practices
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"William Salmon, after travelling in New England and the West Indies,
set up as an irregular outside St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He wrote many astrological and semi-popular medical
works." (From: Bibl. Osleriana, pp. 224.) This volume's covers are brown contemporary calf. The front cover is detached but
present. It is somewhat scuffed and worn, but still very nice with a blind stamped design. The spine (five raised-bands)
has gilt numeral 2 and is rubbed and edgeworn, as is the rear cover which is also blind-stamped with the same decoration
as the front cover. And rear cover is splitting at hinge.
Title page and all other EPS (front and back) include inked notations,
however, remainder of text-block is un-marked but has foxing, some spotting and some discoloration throughout.
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Ars Chirurgica End Papers
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The inked notation on the front appears to be the original owner's name
and address. "Thomas Warden's Surgery. Dr Henry Calloway, Specific Appointment...." While there may be
no way of ever knowing whether the Thomas Warden mentioned is the same, there was a Thomas Warden, born in 1837
(d 1875) who was the son of Jane Stevenson, whose father was Robert Stevenson, and whose brother was Thomas Stevenson,
the father of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), which would make Thomas Warden RLS's cousin.
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Always the prolific and eclectic author, he published a prophetic almanac
in 1684, his first publication of the kind. In the preface to this volume he admitted his preference for dealing
in medicine rather than in prophecy. He then went on to publish (with Randal Taylor) Select Physical and Chirurgical Observations
(1867) and in 1689, with Edward Brewster, a translation of the anatomy of Diemerbroek, the famous physician of
Utrecht.
Next for him to tackle was religion with the 1690 publication of A
Discourse against Transubstantiation. This took the form
of a dialogue between a Protestant and a papist. Two years later came his Practical Physick. And in 1696 The Family
Dictionary,
a work on domestic medicine.
In 1707 he published The Practice of Physick, or Dr. Sydenham's
"Processus Integri" Translated. Posthumously published,
Thomas Sydenham's Processus integri was the customary handbook for English physicians for more than a century, according to an
article on Sydenham at Whonamedit.com. Sydenham was an English physician after whom "Sydenham's chorea",
an infectious disease of the central nervous system, was named.
And still more was yet to come. In 1710 and 1711 Salmon published two folio volumes, Botanologia; or the English Herbal,
dedicated to Queen Anne. He died in 1713. His portrait is prefixed to his edition of Diemerbroek, and to his Ars Anatomica, which appeared
posthumously in 1714. Several other engraved portraits are mentioned by Bromley, among them being one by Vandergucht.
Parts of the Bibliotheque des Philosophes, 1672, and the Dictionnaire
Hermetique,1695, are attributed to him, and in addition
to the books mentioned above, he wrote Officina Chymica, Systema Medicinale, Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, Pharmacopoeia Bateana, and Phylaxa Medicinae. Any bibliography of his works is complicated, for several reasons. Several
of his books were reprinted with alterations. And even his own lists don't agree with one another and lack dates.
His recorded cases, though they seem original, may often be traced to
other sources, and it would be easy to believe what he says was asserted (Iatrica, preface), that he was merely the amanuensis of another person.
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