In the early 1800s, Americans regularly turned to a book written by Scottish physician William Buchan for medical advice. In Domestic Medicine, Buchan prescribed this pithy remedy for melancholy: The patient ought to take as much exercise in the open air as he can bear … A plan of this kind, with a strict attention to diet, is a much more rational method of cure, than confining the patient within doors, and plying him with medicines.17 Two centuries later, British medical authorities rediscovered the wisdom of Buchan’s advice.
