A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries: As well in Relation to Patients, as Physicians: And Of the; only Remedy thereof by Physicians making their own; Medicines.Merret, Christopher
Philosophy
A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries: As well in Relation to Patients, as Physicians: And Of the; only Remedy thereof by Physicians making their own; Medicines.
Merret, Christopher
Pharmacists; Pharmacy -- England
He will gain reputation to his Art, by restoring it to its first
institution and practice, by the Founders and Heroes of Physic.
By constantly practised Medicines he will find out a better method of
Cure, and may hereby arrive at the true causes of diseases.
He will observe what Medicines by precipitation or other ways, alter,
destroy, or weaken one another, whereby of good ingredients singly
used, a bad Composition may be made, and therefore fail in the success
expected. Many more things might be here added, which a skillful
observer, and versed in the way to make experiments (no easie matter)
will daily find, and at present I do not so much as give hints of
them, but shall hereafter, as occasion and opportunity require.
He will have more scope to be charitable to the poor, and more civil
and obliging to his friends, by curing them gratis, or at small
charges.
He need not trouble himself with ways of concealing the use of his
Medicines, by setting down no directions in his Bill, but giving them
to the Patient, which the Apothecary soon learns; nor with giving some
of his own Medicines at a pinch, which if they succeed not, to be sure
the Apothecaries will cry down in all places, but will conceal all
eminently good successes, as disadvantageous to themselves; nor by
placing their Arcana's in the Shops of those Apothecaries they
commonly make use of; nor by recommending their Patients to such
Apothecaries they intrust their secrets with. For then great
complaints are made that the Physicians carry away their Customers,
and take away their livelyhood, affirming they are willing to fetch
them from the prescribing Doctors Apothecaries. To which I answer,
that they do fetch them, but perhaps not always; since I have heard
them often say, these secrets were but the Medicines of the London
Dispensatory disguised under new names, to the discredit of the
Physicians that prescribed them. And I well remember some of them have
neglected to fetch from my house, not far from their own, some of my
preparations, though they had them gratis, for the fetching; whereby
the Patients have suffered, and thought I neglected them, 'till they
were rectified by another Visit. Nay one of them told me, he had
rather dy with his own Shop-Medicines, then be cured with my
Magistrals: much more would he have said of Patients, manifestly
preferring his own profit before their lives; a most Unchristian
saying!
One singular advantage such a Physician will have, that the slanders
of the Apothecaries will appear to be malicious, as being raised
against such as act contrary to their profit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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