A new guide to health. Compiled from the catechism of Dr. Faust; with additions and improvements, selected from the writings of medical men of eminence. Designed for the use of schools, and private families

Newburyport: W. & J. Gilman, 1810. FIRST EDITION. Original calf-backed boards, spine label; interior somewhat browned due to paper stock. An amazing survival. First edition, though Faust’s Catechism had been printed in 1795 with a second edition in 1798. Faust (1755-1842) was a German obstetrician and writer, who produced a range of texts designed at improving health amongst the general public. His “Health Catechism” (Gesundheits-katechismus Zum Gebrauche in Den Schulen und Beim Häuslichen Unterrichte, Bückeburg, 1794) was aimed at children and used a popular question and answer format, which was designed to help people – especially youth – memorize the information. Faust’s writing reflects a trend amongst some medical professionals of the early nineteenth century to conflate health and spiritual concerns, where attending to the body became part of moral practice. Children here are taught to interpret care for their bodies as a moral duty, reinforcing his claims with bible verses on similar topics. Notably, and reflecting the growth in utilitarian ideas that saw pleasure and pain as drivers of human behavior, the healthy body is a happy body, and pain and unpleasant emotions signs of physical and moral disorder.

According to the “Advertisement” prefacing the text, “in the compilation of this work, Dr. Faust's Catechism of health, improved and corrected by Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh, has been taken for the foundation; a few observations are omitted, as being foreign to the situation and habits of society in this country; and copious additions have been made, by selections from the writings of medical men of the first respectability and talents, but principally from Willich’s Lectures on diet and regimen, and Parkinson's Medical admonitions.”

Austin 763.