A Treatise of Vapours, or Hysterick Fits. Containing An Analytical Proof of its Causes, Mechanical Explanations of all its Symptoms and Accidents, according to the Newest and most Rational Principles. Together with its Cure at large. The Second Edition, Revis’d and Augmented. By John Purcell, M.D.

For this edition, Purcell expanded the section on the mechanical explanations of symptoms, changed the prescriptions from English into Latin, and added another section. Wellcome IV, p. 448. Second edition. According to Worldcat this edition only registred in 3 libraries worldwide. Purcell practised medicine in London, and in 1702 published ‘A Treatise of Vapours or Hysteric Fits’, of which this second edition appeared in 1707. The book is dedicated to ‘the Honourable Sir John Talbott, his near relation’, and gives a detailed clinical account of many of the phenomena of hysteria, mixed up with pathology of the school of Thomas Willis. His preface is the latest example of the type of apology for writing on medicine in the English tongue so common in books of the sixteenth century.