DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE.
3
the contents, and shows that the book was begun in 1710. It
reads as follows:—
" Praxis Medica, / Benjamin Allen, Med. Bacc.: / Medicinal Observa-
tions towards a / Knowledge and Cure of Diseases, / (consisting of Cures
and the Reasons, or what to be minded and understood / for Direction,
what to be design'd [and] noted, and what must be/ gain'd) ; By Benjamin
Allen, Batchillour in Physick, / formerly of Queen's College, in Cambridge;
/ For his own use (because, in many cases, thro'general practise, / we are
apt to overlook what may be preserv'd with accuracy) / and for the use
of his Family. / . . . / Braintry, Essex, 1710."
Below the title are some unimportant general remarks,
added, apparently, at a later date. The dates of various entries
in the book show that it continued in use up to about 1721—
probably, indeed, up 1723, when Allen started the second
volume.
It is clear that Allen originally intended to devote both
volumes to entries relating to medical matters, records of his
cases, notes of prescriptions which he and others had found
effective, and the like. The earlier volume now under notice
(commenced in 1710, when Allen was about forty-seven years
old) was never devoted to any other purpose, there being in
it no records of observations in Natural History and few
notes of purely personal and biographical interest. Conse-
quently, to us, as naturalists, this first volume is of far less
interest than the other (second) volume, which I have already
described; for, although this other volume (commenced in 1723,
when Allen was about sixty years old and had probably retired
to some extent from active practice) remained to the end mainly
a book of notes on medical subjects, Allen came, as time went on,
to enter in it (as I showed in my earlier paper) a large number
of very interesting notes on all sorts of subjects, making it,
indeed, what I called it—a veritable "Common-place Book"
rather than a book of medical observations merely.
Coming, next, to a detailed consideration of the contents
of this newly-discovered (first) volume: we find that, though
in no sense what a physician might call a "Case Book," it
contains a vast number of notes on cases which Allen had treated
—not jotted down as they occurred, but arranged systematically
under diseases, each note giving the name of the patient, the
date of his or her illness, the methods of cure tried, and, generally,