The Kitchin-physician, or, A guide for good-housewives in maintaining their families in health wherein are described the natures, causes, and symptoms of all diseases, inward and outward, incident to the bodies of men, women, and children : prescribing natural, useful and proper medicines, both in physick and chirurgery, as well for the prevention as speedy cure of the said distempers : adorned with sculptures ... / published for the common good ... by T.K., Doctor in Physick.

To the READER.

I Have here set before your view, a pro∣spect of the rich Garden of Nature, adorned with nothing but its own simple qualities; which at first was not obliged to any of the Learned to Translate it into Galenical Compositi∣ons, or any Artificial Experiments, but was made use on by our fore-Fathers, for their relief in Sickness and Malady, long before Physick was brought into a Professi∣on, and the Professors of it courted by the Ignorant, when they received (in ordinary and common Distempers) little more than a bare Complement from them, save one∣ly referring them to their Mother Nature, the true and original Healer of such Di∣seases. And although this small Attempt may receive Opposition from some mean∣spirited Physitians, whose Interest may be invaded by the Publication of it, and who are Impostors of Physick, with pretended Universal Medicines: Yet my design is, (though bred up a Physitian) to leave this as a Legacy to my Country, before my gray hairs go down to the Grave, purely to make them their own Physitians in ca∣ses not dubious, nor requiring the utmost improvement of Nature, into a well-dige∣sted

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and consulted conclusion of Art. And by the way, I would not have the Reader think, that I have the least ill Opinion of the Elaborate Inventions, and ingenious Experiments of the Learned, in bringing Physick to the utmost perfection; for I have a great adoration for all such wor∣thy Improvers of Nature: but I am not of Opinion, that their assistance is necessa∣ry in common and ordinary distempers, which many times the diligent Nurse, or Housewife, by her plain and common Ex∣perience in Herbs and Plants, cures, when they by their sublime and too high strain∣ed applications, leave the Patient in a de∣sperate condition. And therefore I hope these my poor endeavours will be kindly entertained by such of my Country-men as will not entertain prejudice thereto be∣fore-hand; and do not fear that any Learn∣ed Physitian will think ill of this Publica∣tion, (especially if what it contains be true and certain, as I hope it is) his Business and Imployment being of a far higher nature, De ordine Naturae, and seeming rather by his great attempt, as it were, to dispute with our great Mother her self, in matters where she is sometimes at a Ne plus ultra. This I thought good to premise to the so∣ber Reader, and heartily wish that it may answer my honest design therein. Farewel.

T. K.