they will not distil Strong-waters, &c. (an easie thing for them to undertake) and by this means to ruine the Corporation of Distillers of Strong-waters, I leave to the said Company to conceive as they please.  However, this I have heard several of them say, that they resolve to buy all sorts of Drugs, and make a Magazine of them, as well as of the greater Compositions, at their own Hall; and to sell them to the Members of their Company, whereby the Trade of the Druggist, must be much lessened, if not totally over-thrown.  So little regard have they of any other employment but of their own, yet all these things they may do without any offence against the Laws of the Land.  Why then should they, who have so many ways of subsistence, envy, and usurp unlawfully over the single and lawful way granted Physicians for their livelihood?  Or why would they repine, and revile them for advancing their Art, the publick health and profit, and for maintaining their profession by their Pens, and actings against themselves, who are the first aggressors in this division?  Which I profess to be the sole end of these present papers, and heartily wish they may thrive and prosper as long as they conform themselves to the Laws of Honesty, Reason, and of the Land.  Besides, why may not the Plaisterer more reasonably pretend the same to the Painter, and many other Trades against one another, as the Brick-layer to the Stone-Cutter, &c. that they understand the Trade, and that truly too, and that they cannot subsist without this incroachment?  And why should not Chirurgeons keep open Apothecaries Shops? but that the same Law limits those Tradesmen, as well as prohibits the Apothecary from the practice of Physic.  And surely the Law and State have no consideration of those persons subsistence, who conform not to them; and why should we have of those, subordinate to us, who against all good Conscience take away from us all that is our due, and continually traduce and slander us very untruly and designingly?

The last objection (and a strange one) is, that in this private way of giving Medicines, Physicians may poyson their Patients.  But this is easily retorted upon the Apothecaries, who may themselves or their Servants do the like, as ’tis known in the poysoning of Sir Thomas Overbury; besides, since it cannot be otherwise, but that the Patient must trust somebody, ’tis better to trust one then many; and if one, better him whose education will teach him better Morality, (and who hath given his Faith (equivalent to an Oath) twice to the Body of the College; viz. once at his admission as Candidate, and a second time at his admission as Fellow; whereby he promiseth in these words, That he shall give nothing to cause miscarriage, or to destroy, or hinder Conception, nor Poysons (for of such, good Medicines may be made) to an evil purpose, nay that he shall not even teach them where there is any suspicion of ill using of them.  Which promise is nothing else but the Oath proposed by Hippoc. to