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. by Christopher Merrett
page 48 of 67 (71%)
page 48 of 67 (71%)
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and such other vain Arts; much applauded by the weaker sort of people.
Besides, the former they have their Emissaries, Scouts, and Setters up and down, to cry up the skill And feigned Cures done by them, Nurses, Good-fellows, Midwives, &c. to make up the cry and full noise. Now it being natural to most people to admire what they understand not, and for Admiration to infer Love, and Love Praise, and Praise the use especially of such things as are set off with high and lofty expressions, it necessarily follows that such persons will cry up, and make use of, those that by these means captivate their understandings, especially their credits being ingaged also; but above all, if they proceed from meaner persons, of whom they are most credulous, having in suspition wiser men, believing the former are not able, and that the wiser are able; and therefore will deceive them. All which appears in some with us cryed up above any Physician that ever was in England, though for pitiful, dangerous, nay sometimes mortal Medicines, whereby great sums of money have been gained in a short time; I shall instance first in Lockyers Pills made of Antimony, discovered to be so by some of my Collegues, and my self, at the first selling of them. A Medicine as ill made as any of that Mineral, and no Physician though meanly versed in Chymistry, but could have excelled it. Yet so great a Vogue this Pill had for some time, that infinite people resorted to him, and purchased them for their lives, both for themselves, and Families, and (as I have heard) for their posterities too. Though a common Chimney in a little time would have made enough of it to have served the whole Nation for some years to come, and that at very small charges. But Experience, the Tutor of too many, hath in a short time brought these Pills into a dis-use, if not a total Oblivion, even amongst the vulgar. |
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