It is well known how great a Name _Hippocrates_ obtain'd, not only in _Greece_ (which he deliver'd from the greatest Plague) but in remote Parts; so that the greatest Monarchs of the _East_, and their Vice-Roys, were Suitors to him, to free their Country from that devouring Disease, which threatned to exhaust those populous Regions of their Inhabitants, unless the same Person who freed _Greece_ interpos'd, whom they esteem'd divine, and sent from the Gods, because successful in so great Undertakings. Very certain it is, so Noble and Useful a Study were encouraged, yea and practised by Kings, Princes, and Philosophers, by the highest, wisest, and best of Men, whereof some were honour'd by Statues erected to perpetuate their Memoirs, and by many other Instances of the publick Gratitude. So that when I consider what Reverence has been paid to this Profession, and the Professors thereof in all times whereof we have any particular Account, I am amaz'd that in this latter Age wherein it hath received greater Improvements than in Two thousand Years before, and that nevertheless it should be by many neglected, by others slighted, and by some even contemned. After a diligent Enquiry into the Causes of so strange and sudden an Alteration, I could not, in my Opinion, so justly ascribe it to Defects in the Profession, as to those of its Professors; not that I deny that Physick may be capable of greater Improvements, notwithstanding it might to this Day have been maintain'd at least in the same Degree of Honour and Esteem which all Ages have justly had for it, if the Avarice and Imprudence of the Real, the Ignorance and Baseness of the pretended Artists had not interpos'd: Under the former I comprize the Vulgar Physicians; under the latter, their Dependants the Apothecaries, who, I am confident, have caused many of the great Inconveniences under which the Practice of Physick now labours.