Page:Early History of Medicine in Philadelphia - George W Norris.djvu/67

 patient and practitioner. The apothecary then, who is not obliged to spend his time in visiting patients, can afford to make up medicines at a reasonable price; and it is as desirable as just in itself that patients should allow fees for attendance, whatever it may be thought to deserve. They ought to know what it is they really pay for medicines, and what for physical advice and attendance.

"Nobody, I believe, will deny that the practice of rating medicines at such a price as to include the charge for medicine and attendance is liable to great impositions on the part of ignorant medicasters, too many of whom swarm in every city. Patients who are kept in ignorance of what price medicines are considered separately, and what is the value of physical skill and attendance, naturally think the original cost of medicines, which are comparatively cheap, to be very dear, and undervalue the skill of a physician, his toil of study, and his expense of time and money in his education, which have often amounted to very large sums and to many years spent abroad in quest of knowledge, as if they were of no consideration. The levelling of all kinds of practitioners so much with illiterate pretenders, who have art enough to gain employ, however ill qualified in that of healing diseases, has a