"Buchan first published Domestic medicine at Edinburgh in 1769. It had an enormous circulation, no fewer than nineteen editions being published during the author's lifetime, and it continued in print until the mid-nineteenth century. Buchan gives simple and easily followed advice in this book and deals at considerable length with various matters that may affect the health, such as diet, ventilation, sleep, cleanliness, and infection. The greater part of the treatise is taken up with a description of the causes, management, and treatment of diseases, such as fevers, pneumonia, smallpox, whooping cough, and colic. His remarks are of lasting value and give valuable insight into the relationship between social conditions and disease in the eighteenth century." Heirs of Hippocrates 991 (for 1784 edition).