An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

GUNN, John C.

1 entries
  • 9150

Gunn’s domestic medicine, or poor man’s friend in the hours of affliction, pain, and sickness. This book points out, in plain language, free from doctor's terms the diseases of men, women, and children, and the latest and most approved means used in their cure, and is expressly written for the benefit of families in the western and southern states. It also contains descriptions of the medicinal roots and herbs of the western and southern country, and how they are to be used in the cure of diseases: arranged on a new and simple plan, by which the practice of medicine reduced to the principles of common sense.

Knoxville, TN: Printed under the Immediate Superintendence of the Author, a Physician of Knoxville, 1830.

Gunn intended his book to serve as a guide for frontier and rural families who lived far away from any sort of medical care so it contained instructions on how to treat a wide variety of illnesses.  While the first edition was a relatively modest 440 pages, subsequent editions ballooned to over 1000 pages that included advice on everything from the proper behavior of wives to how to cope with a child who indulges in the “solitary vice.”  Gunn’s work became well-known enough to merit a mention in both Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, as one of the books at the Grangerford residence, and is described as, “[telling] you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead.” 

Digital facsimile of the 1835 fourth edition from Google Books at this link.



Subjects: COUNTRIES, CONTINENTS AND REGIONS › United States , COUNTRIES, CONTINENTS AND REGIONS › United States › American South, Household or Self-Help Medicine, Popularization of Medicine, U.S.: CONTENT OF PUBLICATIONS BY STATE & TERRITORY › Tennessee