On the Treatment and Management of the More Common West-india Diseases 1750-1802

This work brings together, in one volume, a number of monographs from the mid to late eighteenth century (the period known as the Age of Reason) on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of African and Creole slaves in the English-speaking Caribbean. Included here are James Grainger's Essay on the More Common West-India Diseases (1764) and Book IV of The Sugar-Cane (1764); Book II of the Reverend Griffith Hughes's Natural History of the Island of Barbados (1750); and Benjamin Moseley's Miscellaneous Medical Observations (1789). These monographs have been all but forgotten; however, they are of importance to scholars. Dr Hutson provides a fully annotated text that explains archaic terminology, makes medical, botanical and Latin terminology accessible to non-specialists in those fields, and provides useful explanations of eighteenth-century medical concepts. This fascinating collection has much to offer historians and health-care professionals, as well as general readers with an interest in the West Indies. Book jacket.

J. Edward Hutson is Antiguan by birth, Barbadian by descent and Canadian by choice. A graduate of the University of Liverpool, he has practised medicine in England, Barbados and Canada. Following retirement he has indulged his interest in West Indian history and previously produced three annotated versions of ancient texts: Richard Ligon's 1657 True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes; The English Civil War in Barbados, 1650-1652; and The Voyage of Sir Henry Colt to the Islands of Barbados and St Christopher, May-August 1631, all published by the Barbados National Trust. Dr Hutson Lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.