The Essay on waters and other medical writings of Charles Lucas

Abstract

In recent years, more attention has been given to Charles Lucas’s medical career, in its own way just as interesting and important as his better-known political campaigns. Lucas’s first concentrated period of medical activity was in the 1730s, when he had qualified as an apothecary, the second in the 1750s, following his flight from Ireland and achievement of qualifications in medicine. Having been prominently involved in the campaign which led to the 1735 drugs regulation act, in 1741 Lucas published a pamphlet, Pharmacomastix, which detailed abuses common in the apothecary’s trade and pressed for more radical controls. His most substantial medical work, An Essay on Waters, was published in London in 1756, being devoted to analysis of European spas and the promotion of hydrotherapy. Lucas was able to return to Ireland in 1761 and was elected MP for Dublin city. While politics occupied most of his time until his death in 1771, Lucas maintained his interest in matters medical, securing the passage of another drugs regulation act in 1761, which remarkably is still on the Irish statute book.