You that enter not by the Door into the Profession, but climb up some other Way, ought to take it into your most serious Thoughts, that Mistakes and Mismanagement in so difficult a Business easily happen; often the Mischiefs occasioned thereby are impossible to be retrieved; and being upon the Body, perhaps Mind of Man, sometimes produce such undoing Misery, such deplorable Ruin, as would make even an Heart of Stone break and bleed, and Death to think of it. Suppose one should lose his Limbs or Health, and live unhappily in Pain, Sick or Bedrid all his Days through your improper Applications or ignorant Omissions; Would it not turn your very Bowels within you, and make you wish a thousand times you had never been that unadvis’d Busie-body to act thus foolishly and unfortunately?
But put the Case again: You behold a dead Man (which to me is the most lamentable of all lamentable Spectacles Upon Earth) I say, put Case a poor dead Man were laid before your Eyes, that your Heart tells you might probably have lived many a fair Year, had it not been for your physicking of him: Such a Sight, such a Thought, (if you have the least Humanity left) cannot fail to pierce your very Soul; and ever after the Remembrance, yea, the evil Conscience of it must haunt you and give you Horror and Terror, and a sort of Hell to your dying Hour.
Perhaps it may be an only and hopeful Son, in whose Life his aged Parents Lives were bound up; and they die too, or linger out a miserable Life in Sorrow and Anguish worse than Death.
Perhaps the good Father of a many little Orphans, who being poor and now helpless, must pitiously perish, or being fallen into bad Hands, and cheated of what was left them, may suffer Poverty, Contempt, Injury and Misery all their Life long.
Perhaps a Wife, who might have brought forth an useful eminent Man, a Hero of his Generation, and the Head of splendid Families; and so the Mischief you do may fall upon not only the present but future Ages.
But Possibilities and putting of Cases are endless, the Upshot of all this, if you take upon you to cure the Sick, and be not licensed and otherwise qualified for it, if you presumptuously thrust in your self, and bar out another that is authorized and able, though no ill Event chance thereupon, yet well it might, and was likely to do so for all you; and therefore good Providence that protected your Patient, and fenced off the Evils, is alone to be thanked, and you nevertheless to be blamed.
But if Death ensue your arrogant Intermeddling and pernicious Quackery, be assured of it, ’tis a sort of Murder in the Court of Conscience, and probably will be adjudged so in the last Great Court.
This is not my private Opinion only, but the Judgment and Decision of the Legislature of our Land; for the Present State of England tells us, That by the Law of England, if one who is no Physician or Surgeon, and not expresly allow’d to practise, shall take upon him a Cure, and his Patient die under his Hands, this is Felony in the Person presuming so to do.
’Tis not enough for you to say, If I can do no Good, I’ll do no Hurt, (which you may as well invert, and say, If I do no Hurt I’ll do no Good) no, you interlope, you injure the Faculty, you discourage Education, you keep out better Advice, you trifle with Mens Lives, you lose the golden Opportunity, you prolong the Case ’till it gets head, and grows incurable and mortal, or else extremely hazardous and almost helpless; and this is doing Hurt with a Vengeance.
To bring this home to you, and make it more plain. If an House be on Fire, and you come and pretend to put it out your self, and absolutely keep off others, and then fling in Dust instead of Water, and so the Flame gets Mastery; in this Case, though you did not directly intend any positive Hurt, though you did not actually pour in Oil, nor stir and blow up the Coals; yet forasmuch as you would needs be an Undertaker, and could not extinguish it your self, and suffered not others, used to and skill’d in the Business, who coming with Water and proper Engines, might have done it, you are really and truly the Cause of it being burnt.