Page:Merret - A short view of the frauds and abuses committed by apothecaries.pdf/50

 but shall hereafter, as occasion and opportunity require.

He will have more scope to be charitable to the poor, and more civil and obliging to his friends, by curing them gratis, or at small charges.

He need not trouble himself with ways of concealing the use of his Medicines, by setting down no directions in his Bill, but giving them to the Patient, which the Apothecary soon learns; nor with giving some of his own Medicines at a pinch, which if they succeed not, to be sure the Apothecaries will cry down in all places, but will conceal all eminently good successes, as disadvantageous to themselves; nor by placing their Arcana's in the Shops of those Apothecaries they commonly make use of; nor by recommending their Patients to such Apothecaries they intrust their secrets with. For then great complaints are made that the Physicians carry away their Customers, and take away their livelyhood, affirming they are willing to fetch them from the prescribing Doctors Apothecaries. To which I answer, that they do fetch them, but perhaps not always; since l have heard them often say, these secrets were but the Medicines of the London Dispensatory disguised under new names, to the discredit of the Physicians that prescribed them. And I well remember some of them have neglected to fetch from my house, not far from their own, some of my preparations, though they had them gratis, for the fetching; whereby the Patients have suffered, and thought I neglected them, 'till they were rectified by another Visit. Nay one of them told me, he had rather dy with his own Shop-Medicines, then be cured Rh