diseases. The
Fourth edition, corrected from the original
Latin, by John Pechey, M.D. of the College of Physicians in London.
London: Printed for
R. Wellington,
1705.
8vo. 232 leaves; no copy was seen for collation.
This edition not in Osler.
Surgeon General’s Library Catalogue II, xvii, 323.
Jefferson bought this book, probably in 1801, at the instance of Dr. Eustis of Boston, whom he had consulted on his health.
On June 17, 1804, he wrote the story in a letter to Henry Fry of Madison County[,] Virginia, who was having similar physical
troubles: “
. . . I am sorry to learn that your health continues declining. I suppose it is from a continuation of the visceral complaint
you mentioned to me. I then slightly stated to you what I will now do more fully. I was taken with such a complaint the beginning
of 1801. it continued on me with more or less violence near two years. mentioning it to D
r. Eustis of Boston he told me there was but one remedy to be relied on, that which had been discovered by the great Sydenham,
which was riding a trotting horse. I immediately recollected that every time I had gone home or returned, it had been cured
for a time. I got Sydenham’s book, and observed the numerous instances he mentions of radical cure, when every thing else
had failed, by putting his patients on a trotting horse & making them take long journies. I had not time to take journies,
but I began to ride regularly 2. or 3. hours every day. it was some time before the effect was sensible, because it takes
time to strengthen the bowels, but in about a year I was compleatly cured, & am now perfectly well. ‘go thou & do so likewise’
. . .
"
P.S. you have time. take therefore a long journey at first.”
Eighteen years later, in a letter dated from Monticello, July 18, 1822, to Judge Spencer Roane, Jefferson wrote: “
. . . I learn with great regret the state of your health, and that it is the visceral complaint which seems peculiar to the
tidewaters. Girardin, who contracted it in Richmond came up to Milton where he lived 2. years & was perfectly restored, and
thence removed to Staunton and continues in sound health. but the great Sydenham found nothing to be relied on but long journies
on a hard trotting horse, and that he found infallible. when threatened with a complaint of this kind while I lived at Washington
D
r. Eustis referred me to Sydenham, corroborated by his own experience, and a couple of hours riding every day relieved me from
a case tolerably manifest, altho but incipient. I should be much gratified to hear of your visiting Kentucky on a Coach-horse
. . .
”
John Pechey, 1655-1716, English medical writer. The first edition of his translation of the whole works of Thomas Sydenham was published
in 1696.
William Eustis, 1753-1825, physician and statesman of Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. Eustis, a Jeffersonian in politics, was for a time Governor of Massachusetts.
Spencer Roane, 1762-1822, Virginia jurist and political writer,w as made a judge of the General Court in 1789. He was the founder of the Richmond Enquirer, of which his cousin Thomas Ritchie became the editor. Roane married the daughter of Patrick Henry. Jefferson’s letter to him quoted in this number and dated July 18, 1822, was written during Roane’s last illness. He died within two months, on September 4.
