d for maintaining their
profession by their Pens, and actings against themselves, who are the
first aggressors in this division? Which I profess to be the sole end
of these present papers, and heartily wish they may thrive and prosper
as long as they conform themselves to the Laws of Honesty, Reason, and
of the Land. Besides, why may not the Plaisterer more reasonably
pretend the same to the Painter, and many other Trades against one
another, as the Brick-layer to the Stone-Cutter, &c. that they
understand the Trade, and that truly too, and that they cannot subsist
without this incroachment? And why should not Chirurgeons keep open
Apothecaries Shops? but that the same Law limits those Tradesmen, as
well as prohibits the Apothecary from the practice of Physic. And
surely the Law and State have no consideration of those persons
subsistence, who conform not to them; and why should we have of those,
subordinate to us, who against all good Conscience take away from us
all that is our due, and continually traduce and slander us very
untruly and designingly?

The last objection (and a strange one) is, that in this private way of
giving Medicines, Physicians may poyson their Patients. But this is
easily retorted upon the Apothecaries, who may themselves or their
Servants do the like, as 'tis known in the poysoning of Sir Thomas
Overbury; besides, since it cannot be otherwise, but that the Patient
must trust somebody, 'tis better to trust one then many; and if one,
better him whose education will teach him better Morality, (and who
hath given his Faith (equivalent to an Oath) twice to the Body of the
College; viz. once at his admission as Candidate, and a second time at
his admission as Fellow; whereby he promiseth in these words, That he
shall give nothing to cause miscarriage, or to destroy, or hinder
Conception, nor Poysons (for of such, good Medicines may be made) to
an evil purpose, nay that he shall not even teach them where there is
any suspicion of ill using of them. Which promise is nothing else but
the Oath proposed by Hippoc. to Physicians, in the entrance to his
Books) then to trust such as want these qualifications; and this seems
to be the reason why our Common Law makes it Felony, for any person to
have any one dy under his hand, unless he were a lawful Physician.
More noble and generous was the opinion of Alexander the Great,
concerning his Physician, who confidently drank off that Medicine
which cured him, tho