REVIEW.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1675, 20 December 1887, Page 3

REVIEW.

W® have received from Mr Miller, who is agent for selling the work, Dr A. W. Chase’s Receipt Book and Household Physician. This hook is the memorial edition of Dr Chase’s works, which have had a large sale in America, and which has been published to commemorate his death, which took place about two years ago. Dr Chase appears to have risen to distinction in America, for the publishers say in the preface to the book that “there never was hut one Dr A. W. Chase.” He received but very little education until he had grown to manhood; married at the age of 24, and did not become a doctor until he was 40 years of age. Thenceforward he appears to have been extremely successful, and with his popularity his benevolence increased, so that at the time of bis death he was a comparatively poor man. The book is therefore published in the hope that it may yield some profit to his family, and at the same time prove useful to its readers. As regards the binding of it, it is a novelty in its way. It is bound in mottled buff-colored oilcloth, ornamentally impressed, and can be washed, so that it will remain a long time fresh and new looking. But the great feature of the book appears to us to be its usefulness and adaptibility to the purpose for which it is intended —that is, to give the unscientific a clear idea as regards the laws of health, as well as useful receipts for the treatment of all kinds of ailments. As regards treatment, Dr Chase appears to lay greater stress on care and nursing than on medicine, for he says that the less medicine one takes the better. He, however, gives thousands of receipts for all kinds of diseases, and what is more, he gives full instructions as to diet, and how to prepare it. He gives no less than 13 different remedies for that fearful scourge diphtheria, all of which may be used under certain conditions, and all diseases incidental to childhood, etc., are dealt with in an equally exhaustive manner. A great many of his receipts are so simple as to appear ridiculous. For instance, he tells a story of a man who went from America to Germany to be cured of neuralgia, and the treatment he received from the German doctors was to apply to him a poultice made from the leaves of the common field thistle. The best way to purify the blood is to •at a raw onion finely minced at' breakfast, and 20 different remedies are given for corns. In addition to all these receipts a great deal of space is devoted to the laws of health, forty different ways of making bread are given, 70 ways of making puddings, 276 kinds of cakes, and then there are chapters on butter making, stock raising, and the diseases of all kinds of cattle aid poultry, and also on bee keeping, gardening, etc. Almost every conceivable subject is dealt with in such a simple, homely, plain way that no one can fail to understand fully what he is reading, and to simplify things still further there is a glossary of medical terms at the end of the hook, which gives the meaning of all medical words. Taken all round the hook appears to be extremely useful in a family —the simplicity of its language, and the ease with which the various directions given for treating diseases can be followed rendering it especially so, Its price, too, is, considering all things, very low. It is sold in America at 2 dollars 75 cents, and in this colony at 15s, and thus the price is only about 3s 6d more here than where it is published. Mr ■Woulfe is now canvassing the district for it, and will be able _to afford our readers fuller information as regards its value.