William Salmon
[1] Salmon "copied, translated, abridged, enlarged and compiled from the texts of others" to create popular books emphasizing practice over theory, and often marketing his own medications.
[3] His books were owned by respected men including Isaac Newton, Daniel Defoe, William Congreve and Samuel Johnson.
[8] He treated diseases, compounded and sold prescriptions, cast horoscopes, and studied alchemy, all "form[s] of medical practice common at the time".
[3] William Salmon fills his medical works with observations about cases, but the extent to which he draws on other authors makes it difficult to characterize his personal practice.
[11] His descriptions of senile dementia suggest careful observation: he described a patient as "not mad, or distracted like a man in Bedlam", but rather "decayed in his wits".
[8] Salmon produced proprietary medicinal products that included pills, powders, elixirs and lozenges,[1] sometimes with accompanying instructions e.g.
The writing of elaborate treatises with a profound air, in a learned style, and to sell the same at substantial prices, with the purpose of keeping oneself in the publick eye, cannot be excelled by modern medical pundits.
He successfully allied with other apothecaries in blocking an attempt by the Royal College of Physicians to "Monopolize all the practise of Physick into their own hands" in the 1690s.
"[14] Surgeon James Yonge published the pamphlet Medicaster medicatus, or, A remedy for the itch of scribbling (1685) criticizing the writings of John Browne and of William Salmon.
[15] In 1699 Yonge's Sidrophel Vapulans: or, The Quack-Astrologer tossed in a blanket was directed at Salmon, and he was satirized in physician Sir Samuel Garth's mock-heroic poem, "The Dispensary".
He accumulated an extensive library, and owned scientific and mathematical instruments including two microscopes and a calculating device called Napier's bones.
[5] "If one may judge by his library, Salmon must have been a man of erudition, and of wide and liberal tastes; he must also have been a thorough-going bibliophile and possessed of means sufficient to gratify his acquisitiveness.
[2]: x Salmon's published works covered an incredibly wide range of topics, including pharmacology, medicine, surgery, alchemy, chiromancy, astrology, almanacs, botany, cooking, and art.
[2] Salmon openly acknowledged that much of his work was derivative, stating "we have scrutinized the best Authors, to many of which we have been very much beholden", with an extensive list of members of the Mathematical, Medical, and Chyrurick Tribes, as well as Anatomists, chymists, and a multitude of others.
[22] In addition, instead of taking a specific philosophical position and siding with one of the competing schools of medical thought, Salmon created "a compendium of everything".
[7] In 1672 the same publisher, Richard Jones, brought out Salmon's Polygraphice, the Art of Drawing, Engraving, Etching, Limning, Painting, Washing, Varnishing, Colouring, and Dyeing.
[2]: 113 In subsequent editions, lavish illustrations were added and the range of topics was extended to include cosmetics, chiromancy, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, and medicine.
In six volumes, it purported to cover "the whole Art of Healing", giving practical advice "translated into English for the publick Good".
[27] Among other materials, his London Almanack featured an ailment of the month with suggested "physical recipes" for its treatment, advertisements for his medicines, and complaints about competitors like astrologer Joseph Blagrave.
As all Sorts of Aches and Pains, Apoplexies, Agues, Bleeding, Fluxes, Gripings, Wind, Shortness of breath, Diseases of the Breast and Lungs, Abortion, Want of Appetite, Loss of the use of Limbs, Cholick, or Belly-ache, Appositions, Thrushes, Quinsies, Deafness, Bubo's, Cachexis, Stone in the Reins, and Stone in the Bladder... To which is added, The philosophick Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Kalid Persicus, Geber Arabs, Artesius Longævus, Nicholas Flammel, Roger Bacon, and George Ripley.
[37] In 1698 Salmon published a general surgical treatise, Ars chirurgica: a Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Chirurgery,[38] and became involved in the Dispensary controversy.
In the Harveian Oration of 1697, Sir Samuel Garth promoted the idea that the Royal College of Physicians should build and staff a dispensary offering free treatment to paupers.
[42] Garth himself weighed in with a mock-heroick poem, "The Dispensary" (1699), in which physicians were "on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority".
I have unfolded the whole Medical Art in our English Tongue, and improved and advanced the same in all its Parts of Anatomy, Pharmacy, Chymistry, Chirurgery and Physick, beyond not only what these Warwick-Lane Fellows have done, ever since they have been a fraternity, to this day, but beyond all what ever was done before in the World by any one Man or Body of Men; As also because I have withal laid myself out in the Service of the Publick[43]In 1707 he published a translation from Latin into English of Dr. Thomas Sydenham's Processus Integri in Morbis Fere Omnibus Curandis under the title Praxis Medica: The Practice of Physick, crediting the original author and expanding the text.
