Some letters of Dr. Thomas Willis (1621-1675).

OCCASIONALLY DOCTORS' letters may be of more interest to medical historians than their published writings. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the elegance of a physician's literary style was often more highly regarded than the astuteness of his clinical observations or the efficacy of his treatment. Medical books tended to be inflated with dubious hypotheses and the few worthwhile remedies were often buried beneath a welter of classical allusions and literary extravagances. Some doctors wrote medical treatises in order (as Smollett puts it) 'to force a trade' rather than to convey information. Smollett was able to write with authority as his own pamphlet On the External Use of Cold Water was intended to establish himself in fashionable practice. This was the age of the cynically successful Dr. Richard Mead who gave this advice to a young practitioner: