Antonette Matteson

The Occult Family Physician Antonette Matteson

Antonette Mattesons "Occult Family Physician" is one of a large number of works from its era on the subject of herbal medicine; it is, however, more comprehensive than most, mixing a fairly exhaustive list of specific recipes with a truncated Materia Medica and a basic and reasonably modern dietary guide. It also includes a few short poems and a passage, oddly, on spiritism, mediumship, and clairvoyance. Overall it is quite good; the botanic method often ruminated on but a few species (lobelia notably) but Mattesons work goes a bit further than this and provides a list of about a hundred herbal species of note which are variously combined with other methods to preserve, restore, and promulgate health. It is perhaps one of the best medical works of its admittedly pre-modern era.