Page:Merret - A short view of the frauds and abuses committed by apothecaries.pdf/78

 As for their opposition also in the Country, take this one Example. An eminent Physician of Gloucester by reason of the Apothecaries Frauds, &c. betook himself to make his own Medicines, taking for his Servant one that was not a Freeman of the said City. Who in his Masters absence, and contrary to his command, sold to an Apothecary a Medicine not to be had, or at least pretended not to be had in the Town, for a most urgent and necessary use; whereupon the Apothecaries conspiring together, exhibited a complaint to the Mayor and Court of Aldermen, requiring of them, that the said Physician (who was a Freeman, and had lately born the Office of Mayor) might be dis-franchised. Which being not granted them, they set the whole City into such disorder, that they refused to attend the Mayor on a Solemn day (as their Custom is, and are bound to do) with their Flags from their Town-Hall to the Church, which the prudence of the Magistrates for the present qualified. This relation I had from the then Mayor my Kinsman, in the presence of a London Apothecary.

Next as to the Lyes and Scandals of my self, I shall take notice only of those that concern practice (the rest being but generally false and non-sensical revilings.) One is, that they most untruly entitle me to have been Physician to the Lady Anderson, and many others which I never saw or heard of; and that I soon dispatched them. Another wherewith they make great noise, is, of one Mr. Staples in Covent-Garden, whom they say also I dispatched in few days. The true relation whereof was this. An able Rh