By this means Physicians will unite against the common Enemy, will contribute mutual assistance, and communicate more freely to one another their practice and remedies; and also the frauds and unlawful practices of the Apothecaries, will conceal the counsels, and act whatsoever may tend to the advance of their Art; and Patients also will discover the Apothecaries censures, and practices against the Physicians and their prescriptions.
Hereby that great interest will decay Apothecaries have in Families for their petty officiousnesses (which Physicians not to displease them have put them upon) these will be taught Nurses, and the assistants, and which are by some of these as well, certainly more diligently performed then by the Apothecaries.
Hereby the filii Artis, or younger Physicians, will sooner come into a better and more setled practice, and not be beholden to Apothecaries to bring them Patients wherewith they often upbraid them, and glory amongst themselves and to other persons, that they introduced such and such a Physician.
Hereby Chirurgeons will be restored to some of their employment now usurped by the Apothecaries, as leting of blood, applying Leeches, Plasters, Cupping-Glasses, Syringing and Salivation, wraping up bodies in Cere-Cloaths, &c. which indeed do more properly belong to them then to the Apothecaries; hereby also haply many occasions of quarrel betwixt Physicians and the Apothecaries will cease, each party acting according to his own way.
By this means Pseudochymists, and other Mountebanks mouths and revilings will be stopped, only exclaiming for this, that Physicians make not their own Medicines. But since the publication of these papers I am informed that the said Pseudochymists and Mountebanks rail against me, this Book, and the way propounded, as much as the Apothecaries, though before equal Enemies each to others. So that they have fulfilled the Proverb, of like to like. And no wonder since hereby their Kingdom of darkness is brought to light, and they are obliged to oppose it, as the Copper-Smiths were to revile St. Paul for speaking against the Idol of Diana of the Ephesians, whereby their trade was lost.
And as for the reasonableness of it, that the Physician ought to support himself by all lawful ways and means, and to have praeeminence above those ignorant persons that incroach upon his profession, ’tis confessed by all that have considered the great charge, study, and labour, before he can arrive at any benefit from it; for he must take the chargeable degrees of Batchellor, and Master of Arts, Batchellor of Physic, and after 14 years standing, the degree of Doctor; besides his bare expences for his maintenance in the University, Charges in Anatomies, knowledg of natural things; Travels abroad, Chymistry, and Experiments; his Library, Habit, his more free way of living in a suitable house, and Attendants, greater Taxes, &c. insomuch that a Doctor of Physic spends more before he comes to practise,