Page:Merret - A short view of the frauds and abuses committed by apothecaries.pdf/17

 them at, and yet such however falsifyed maintain a trade amongst Country, and low-priced City-Apothecaries, and the Chirurgeons profess they cannot effect their Cures with the Shop-Medicines, and that this is the reason why they make their own Oyls, Oyntments, &c. as the Apothecaries Charter allows them to do; and why may not Physicians think this to be the cause why they sometimes fail in their Cures, as well as Chirurgeons? and also make their own Medicines as well as they, especially since the Apothecary may as easily falsify, and to greater profit in the one, then in the other?

Ninthly, As to their use of bad or decayed Drugs, 'tis so common a practice that I shall need to give but one notorious instance of it, and 'tis this; I having occasion to use some Seeds, sent for them to a Seedsman, the Messenger desiring to have those of the same Year. The Tradesman knowing him to live with me, asked, if they were for Physical use, he replyaed in the affirmative, whereat he presently shewed him others, which were of 6 or 7 years old (as he confessed) affirming them to be as good for that use as the newest, which sold only for sowing, and that he kept the others, though never so old, for the Apothecaries only, who still asked for them, buying them though 20 years old, not regarding if they were decayed and wholy effete (for no Seed will preserve its vegetative faculty above 7 years much less its Physical) so they could but have them cheap. Besides their pretty knacks (as they call them) of making their Compounds fair to the eye, more vendible, but worse for use, by restoring them to their colour and consistence, that Rh