Think not to excuse your self by pretending you did it out of Charity, and meant well, though it fell out ill; no, no, be it known to you, such a Charity as did not appertain to you, and proved murderous, was unpardonable Presumption, and therefore will not cover the multitude of Sins.
If you are not sufficient for those Things, you’ll do well and wisely to desist from this difficult and dangerous Practice, and fall into such a Trade of Life as you well understand and rightly can manage. And then like the Men who used curious Arts (Acts xix. 19.) you may burn all your Receipt-Books; so shall you keep your Innocence, save your Conscience, secure your Quiet, and yet reserve Room enough to exercise your Charity.
For if at any Time your Heart move you to pity and succour a poor sick Neighbour that can’t pay for Advice, there will be no Necessity that you should try your Skill upon him, ’till you mischief or murder him by way of Charity. Do but you send him a Physician, Medicines and Necessaries without Hope of Requital; and trust me, that will be an handsome Assistance, most nobly becoming a generous Mind and a charitable Man.
Now that not one of our Apothecaries, or indeed very few of our modern Traders in Physick, have these requisite Endowments, I shall leave it to any considerate Person to judge of; and how far they stretch beyond their Knowledge, we have a many miserable Objects in our daily View, woful Instances of their great Rashness, Folly and Ignorance.
That the Profession has sunk into the Craft of deceiving, and amusing, and making Profit by new Medicines, or useless Preparations brought into fashion, and highly esteem’d, as long as the Mode of crying them up shall last, and the Fallacy which imposes them can support it, the unhappy People suffer themselves to be deluded, and cheated of their Lives, and their Money. The Rich please themselves that they can purchase the Alexipharmic, which has Power to controul the Disease, and have not any Doubt within themselves, that by the often Use, their Lives become almost immortal; they look down with some small Pity on the Vulgar, who they think must die before them, being not able to pay the Ransom. They please themselves, because Health and Life are of the highest Demands for these Rarities peculiar to them. The Gentlemen of both the higher and lower Faculty have not been wanting to make use of the Credulity and Weakness of the richer Patients; and I shall now lay open to your great Surprize, that the most despicable and useless Stuff have been brought into the highest Esteem to be rely’d on in the most difficult and dangerous Distempers.
And First, of the Bezoar-Stone, an obvious Instance of our English Practice, from whence you may concur with the Physicians abroad, with what Skill, and Art, and Integrity the Profession continues to be practised here.
Bezoar (which has neither Smell nor Taste, and upon taking into the Stomach gives no Sensation perceivable) has held its Name and Reputation almost sacred with us, though exploded long since in almost all Parts of Europe. The French are well convinced that they have been impos’d upon by the trading Physicians returning from the Indies, to take off the pretty Trifle at a very great Price; they had made it to be admired, by asserting that it was able to encounter Poisons, that no malignant Distempers were able to resist its soveraign Virtues; but their overdoing, spoilt their Market, the more curious and wiser Part of the Nation discerning the Abuse, had the Opportunity of promoting the Experiment, which they procured by the King’s Command, two Criminals who had Poison given them, with Promise of Life, if Bezoar could procure their Pardon. They lost their Lives, and the Physicians and the Stone their Reputations. The greatest and most learned abroad have freely own’d that they have been deceiv’d by it, but their Patients much more, who had used it without Success, and any observable Effect.
Doctor Pauli tells you, he has left the Use of it many Years, and had given to better Purpose, the more powerful and certain Cordials taken from Plants; and supports his Opinion with the Suffrages of Casper, Bauhinus, Casp. Hofmanus, Rectius, Fabriciùs; The learned and judicious Deemoebreck in his Treatise of the Pestilence, declares he had no Regard to it, that he gave it often absque ullo fructu, movebat aliquo modo exiguum duntaxit sudorem. It did, says he, no good to those who used it; scarcely mov’d so much as a little Sweat: It was of the best Parcel chosen of any coming from the Indies, or ever was sent to Europe, but gave them not the least Relief, though they had promised themselves the greatest from it: To confirm his Opinion that it is worth nothing, he produces the Opinion of Hercules Saxonias, and Crato Physician to three Emperors, and refers you to many others. Doctor Patin, late Royal Professor of Physick in Paris, decides the Pretences to its being of any kind of Use: He says it neither stirs the Blood, nor puts the Spirits in any Motion; besides, some of the above-nam’d Physicians, he appeals to the Judgment of many others, and his own Experience of more than thirty Years. The lately corrected Leewarden’s Dispensatory leaves it out of their Gascoins Powder, condemning it as a useless and frivolous Ingredient.
Bontius tells you, that if we must give Stones, we ought to put a greater Value upon those cut out of the Bladders of Man, a more noble Creature, fed with Meat of the highest Nourishment, and his Spirits warm’d with Wine, than that of a Goat starving upon the Mountains. He assures you that he has given the Bezoar, from the Gall or the Bladder, with better Effect than he ever observ’d of those from the Indies. The Physicians who first began the Amusement and Cheat, made themselves ridiculous by dreading to give for a Dose more than five, or six, or seven Grains: You may take forty or fifty with no other Advantage or Alteration than your Imagination shall raise; and with the same Effect, ten times as much more. It may, with modern Observers, pass for a Sweater, and a Cordial, when they have given it with good Cordials, and Sweaters, but the most visible Operation it has, is seen when the Bill is paid. Our Physicians in their private Conversations, talk of it as a thing altogether worthless; but because the People are willing to be cheated with Bezoar and Pearl, they dare not entertain a Thought of undeceiving them, fearing the Consequence to their own Disadvantage: And I pray with what Art can the high Rate of Medicines be maintain’d, if the World could not be amused with the Imagination of being kept alive in all the Distempers, by the Force of these two?
Pearl is a Disease in a Shell-Fish, as Bezoar is in the Quadruped: They are very different in Shape and Bulk, the whitest and most glittering are most in Esteem; the sickly Fancy conceits it will revive the Blood as it pleases the Eye; and that it will brisk up the Spirits and Mind, when it reflects on its being dear and fashionable. But this has been despis’d by the honest Physicians, who prescribe for the Cure of their Patients. The famous Plater, after the Experience of a many Years Practice, rejects the pretended Virtues of Pearl, or Metals, which have no Taste or Smell, to give the least Pretence to rank them with the Vegetable Alexipharmicks.