"Laying Medicine More Open to Mankind": Public Health and Accessibility

Abstract

Abstract: This essay turns to William Buchan's Domestic Medicine (1769) to consider how this popular manual modeled a form of accessible health education for the wider public. Published well before public health became a professionalized field, Buchan's book of practical health advice invited its readers to take ownership of their own health but also to better understand the often inaccessible practice of medicine. This essay considers how Buchan's investment in "laying medicine more open to mankind" might offer ways to intervene in the long-standing problems of scientific distrust and medical resistance intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic.