Medicine, health and economic development: promoting spa and seaside resorts in Scotland C. 1750-1830.

In 1769 the Edinburgh-trained physician, Dr William Buchan, produced the first edition of his Domestic medicine, which was to be a best-seller over the next thirty years. Edition after edition followed, nineteen in all in Britain, each of 5000 to 7000 copies.2 Pirated in America, translated into every language in Europe, recognized by the Empress of Russia, Domestic medicine made Buchan's name familiar in many a household in Scotland and beyond, no mean achievement for someone whom even his friends thought more fond of the coffee house than consultation, of prattle than practice. Buchan was a medical journalist, who revised the text from edition to edition to take account of the latest changes in medical practice; the 1772 Philadelphia edition incorporated a digest of a dissertation on the gout; the 1802 version included a section on the introduction of vaccination. It is highly significant, therefore, that Buchan added to the ninth edition published in 1786 an appendix in the form of a twenty page pamphlet, offering sensible advice about when and for which conditions it would be beneficial to bathe, at a bath, or in a river, or at the seaside; or to drink the mineral waters at a spa such as Harrogate in England or Moffat in Scotland.3 His son, a medical practitioner resident in London, was to follow in his father's