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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46974	Agyrto-mastix, or, Some brief animadversions upon two late treatises one of Master George Thomsons, entituled Galeno-pale, the other of Master Thomas O'Dowdes, called The poor mans physitian : with a short appendix relating to the Company of Apothecaries / by William Johnson, chymist to the Kings Colledge of Physitians in London.	Johnson, William, fl. 1652-1678.	1665 (1665)	Wing J854; ESTC R43321	46,440	146

as followeth A Resolution of Mr Lockiers PILL AFter the dissolution of half an ounce of Master Lockiers Pills in a sufficient quantity of Spirit of Wine which served onely to take away the mucilaginous substance with which they were formed into those small proportions I found a remaining powder which after it was dry answered as I thought in colour and weight to Vitrum Antimonii for further discovery I pulverized half an Ounce of Vitrum Antimonii and in the opinion of all that were present there was no ocular demonstration to the contrary but that they were all one However that it might be put beyond all dispute I melted down Master Lockiers Pills and out of that half Ounce I reduced Two Drams and Eleven Grains of pure Regulus of Antimony after this I melted down the same quantity of Vitrum Antimonii out of which I also did reduce the same quantity of Regulus wanting but five Grains which is not onely an undeniable demonstration that Master Lockiers Pills are altogether Antimonial but as evidently plain that they are nothing else but Vitrum Antimonii powdered and formed into those small Granula's in which form he has so publickly sold them all England over And now what will be the dangerous consequence and hazard to many mens lives to whom these Impostors thus unadvisedly offer their Medicine without any consideration or respect either to the nature of the Disease habit of Body constitution of the Patient but in all cases to persons of all Ages and Constitutions at a venture give it in like quantity I say what evil event must ensue such absurd practises I leave to the Judgement of All Rational Men. The Appendix Worthy Gentlemen WHen I first undertook an Answer to these indirect Practitioners in Physick I also intended to offer something oy way of Proposal or rather a most Humble Address to You The President Fellows and Commonalty of the Kings Colledge of Physitians in this Famous City As also to the Master Wardens and Company of Apothecaries in order to the rectifying of some Enormous abuses that within the space of some fevv years past have crept into the general Practise of Physick But having perused a little Book Entituled A Letter concerning the present State of Physick Written by a Person of Quality and without dispute great Learning who has so effectually and fully discust the whole matter and proposed such excellent means and wayes as well to prevent the like for the future as for the advancing all the desiderata of this Profession in all which his principal aim is the restoring of this Practise of Physick to its antient Constitution which as this Worthy Gentleman sayes Till good Learning came to be over-thrown and laid wast by the Furious irruption of the Goths though it now stands devided between the Chirurgeon and Apothecary was then the sole care of the Physitian onely and t is very true they did then officiate in all the faculties of Physick But it is observ'd likewise that this Profession in general never flourish'd better then it has in these three Branches viz. Physitians Chirurgeons and Apothecaries nor has there been a greater improvement in Physick in any Age of the World then what has been made within this Thirty years last past and I presume without disparagement to any I may affirm this to have been brought about by the Industry and Pains principally of the Honourable Society of Physitians in London as well in the business of Anatomy as Physick Nor has the Chirurgeons and Apothecaries been unuseful in this advancement but each of them in their respective Sphears have been Exemplary to our Neighbouring Nations Then what remains to the perfect advancement of this God-like Profession but a reuniting of the whole Body consisting of these Branches into those true and amicable respects in which current to this day Physick has so well prospered and the rather because as this noble Gentleman has well observ'd it might otherwayes Be lookt upon in respect of these though additional two very Worthy Societies of Men Chirurgeons and Apothecaries as a thing extreamly unreasonable to undertake such an alteration as the restoring of that antient way would necessarily introduce Besides the great difficulty must needs be expected in bringing this expedient to its intended perfection it may probably be conjectured that then the continuance of more time with some other inconveniences falling in may again produce the same exigency Wherefore I humbly suppose as being of the same sentiment in that particular with this Noble Gentleman the best expedient for the rectification of all past abuses and to free this Honourable Profession of Physick from all those degenerating Vipers that do not only eat out her bowels by their sinister practises but by their illiterate rude behaviour stick on it like dirt will in my opinion be found to be if the Colledge would please continuing to own the improvement of Rational Chymistry as an addition to all their former manifeftations procure as this Gentleman advises by an address to His Majesty a Publick Authority and Command that all Apothecaries may be oblig'd to buy those Chymical Preparations made in their Publick Elaboratory for the use of His Majesties Subjects or else give satisfaction to the Colledge that they have the same of their own making to the end that no Chymical Preparations may be taken into their shops from the hands of any unskilful or dishonest Operator but from such only as shall be allow'd by the Colledge the rather because there are several in this City who have serv'd an Apprentiship to this profession and are esteem'd persons of such Integrity that what Medicines soever they sell the Colledge to whom in obedience they will be ready to give satisfaction in this point may acquiesce in their just prepatation for further satisfaction to the Colledge I humbly propose that the Master and Wardens of the Company of Apothecaries would please to Enact under a severe penalty that from henceforth none of their Members shall use or put to sale any dispenst Medicine but what they either make themselves or for convenience in their Trade be furnisht by some Member of their own Society since that by this means the Mystery of Physick will not only be preserved with her due bounds but the profession will be much advanc't and that door by which all the fore-mentioned abuses crept in will be stopt up Thus much I humbly offer as my own private thoughts and desires begging pardon if I have too much presumed I cannot after all better conclude then with the words of that incomparable Epistle Since then Worthy Doctors Your selves look upon Rational Chymistry as an Excellent way of enquiry into the natures of things and managed with sound Reason and Philosophy an excellent way also of preparing Medicines Since you are as much conversant in Chymical Authous as any others and have as many and more assistances of learning and experience to judge of them to all which I may very well add since you have also a Perfect and Candid Resolution to Countenance and Improve them as I am Bound in Duty so I humbly make Bold to Offer the Continuance of my Devoted Service in what ever your Honours shall be pleased to imploy Your most Humble and Faithfull Servant William Iohnson FINIS ERRATA PAge 1. line 11. read tough for tuff p. 11. l 20. r by these subtle pa. 12. l. 11. r. both for doth p. 16. l. Past r. interest for intrest p. 52. l. 17. r. inform for imform p. 57. l 2. r. fraudulent for fradulent p. 14. l. 5. r. to give Ben. Johnsons Alchy

their own growing Enormities now Justice is in the hand of the Proper Legislator will prove their own Destruction Our Authour does not at all Decline from the common custome of other Empiricks who alwayes wound the True Physitians with their own Weapons wherefore he is not ashamed in this Seventeenth Chapter to tell us that it was the Galenists course in the Infancy of this Noble Science to cry down Chymistry with all might and main conjuring the world that they should avoid all Chymical Medicines as most dangerous damning them all without distinction How the Doctors are to be understood in this particular and what Great Patrons they alwayes have been of true Chymistry I have already made out sufficiently and cannot say any thing to these last lines without being guilty of Tautology and vain Repetition Besides I find he himself gives the same Exposition in this Hypothesis If they be not well prepared which is not so impertinent as he would have us think since t is not impossible they should be well prepared by such who are unprepared as I may say themselves wanting the Sublimate of Art and abounding with the Precipitate of gross ignorance And hereupon I very readily fall in with my Friend and say as he does Who that argues for Spagyrical Medicines doth not take it for granted that they ought to be made by an Artist But if I be not mistaken this inquiry of Master Thomsons makes not at all for himself nor his Ignorant Brethren who are as far from Art as from fair and honest dealing As in our dayes so formerly there never wanted bold Pretenders who would venture at any thing for their private advantage let the publick dammage be never so great or the lives of men never so much concern'd Such as would be thought Artists though they were not acquainted so much as with Vessels requisite to Operation nor knew the Nature hardly the Names of those Minerals with which they were to deal certainly the Colledge had reason to advise all people in general against the use of any Medicament prepared by such hands least it should come to pass that those Minerals dugg out of the Earth ill prepared should make room to bury those poor Mortals whom such ignorant wretches were sure to murther But now our Authour is mounted into the Chair and speaks with Authority You would sayes he do very well to reslect upon your Dispensatory wherein except some few Chymical lent you all your Preparations either omit to do what they should or commit what they should not He charges here the poor guilty Dispensatory with sins of Omission and Commission but at the same time betrays more of his own infirmity or indeed presumption Does he imagine that every man of understanding should be swaid or governed by his private observation sure 't is impossible he should be believed and I am willing to be so much his Friend as to think he does but droll In Answer to his next preamble I am sorc't to recite more of the Authours own Language then I am willing to give you the trouble of perusal but because it carries with it more of his impertinent boldness then most of the rest I shall not think much of my own labour to render it to you as followeth thus For Example saith he and Experience which is the true Touchstone that must discover us let any of you that is in perfect health pick out of your formal Apothecaries Book stuffed full of supernumerary preparations the most safe and active of them that do you the greatest service to the number of ten weigh out the known Dose of any one singly with the strictest curiosity you please take each of you the same into your own Stomaks and repeat the Dose as often as you dare and so proceed likewise with another and so to the residue of the ten When ye have acted your parts we likewife every way sound selecting ten of our Arcana's will swallow down without trusting to the Scales a sufficient quantity of any one that may be most suspected which we commonly exhibit to the sick for their recovery look how often ye have taken of each of your ten so often will we iterate or duplicate the sumption of any one of ours And then let any indifferent person judge who bears their Medicines best having the fewest bad symptomes following and so conclude accordingly whose are most dangerous That the madness of this Man may appear as well as his folly I will meet him at the same Touchstone of Discovery he desires as above mentioned and will give him leave to pick out any ten of those supernumerary preparations he talks of in the Dispensatory and when he has done the known Doses shall be weighed out Then shall he also have liberty to pick ten of his own Arcana's and without any Juggling or Equivocation according to his own Proposition here recited I will my self before any such as shall be chosen and counted competent Judges allowing our selves to be equally sound take Dose for Dose with Master Thomson provided his Arcana's be as candidly discovered to the World as those Preparations in the Dispensatory which is but reason And if Master Thomson refuse this I may rationally believe his bold Challenge was no more then a plain Juggle and his not trusting the Scales in the Dosing of his Medicines gains so little trust to either that I am apt to compare him to an Empirical Medicaster whom I have known to perform his tricks upon the Stage in a Market Town whose way of deceiving the people was by a pretended Antidote against Poyson or any Infection for which purpose he suborn'd a Fellow that would take his pretended Poyson and Antidote to counterfeit both Sickness and Cure but one day having neglected to make some Antidotes ready when the Fellow before all the People had taken his Dose of Poyson and there was no Antidote at hand the deceitfull Empirick presently commands one of his Servants to fetch a piece of the Venison of a leg of Mutton and cut it in the form of his Antidotes which was all that he gave at that bout and when they had done with a good round Oath he affirm'd it as good an Antidote as the best The truth of this story being so Eminently known to some others as well as my self compared with Master Thomsons careless dispensing of his Doses makes me much mistrust his Medicines Hence one may conclude certainly either that his Medicines are invalide or that expression of his a sufficient quantity to be like the rest of his Equivocations but take him which way you will he surely intends to play the Hocus-Pocus his Medicine and the Medicasters Mutton differing but little in effect only the Mutton is more Nutritive and his Medicines chips in the Porridge And these are the Medicines sayes he we commonly exhibit to the sick for their recovery How sad then must the condition of those Patients be what little hope can

and this further appears by what he sayes immediately after concerning Preparations made with his own fingers for it seems Master Thomson besides his Panacea has some Auxilary Preparations But I will be bold to say If his Interest would give him leave to be honest and deal plainly that he will not be able to produce one Medicine among all his thirty Auxiliary Forces but what he is beholden for to some Apothecaries Shop but because our Empiricks craftily use known Medicines by obscure names this cheat is not so easily demonstrated Thus hath my Gentleman shown our Doctors the way not to redeem the credit of this noble Science which he has indeavoured to stain but yet to restore it to its pristine renown yes such as it was in the days of Yore when Apollo and Aesculapius were Deified for two or three good Receipts and Chiron the Centaure past for an Excellent Physitian in succeeding Ages Physick acquired a greater growth and then knowledge generally increasing in the World Hippocrates and Galen though far exceeding their Predecessors were yet esteem'd but as Men This Noble Science from its small beginnings growing by degrees is arrived now at the highest top of perfection in the most Famous Colledge of London in which there is not one Physitian but far out-shines Apollo himself with his brightest rayes and if they had liv'd in that Age had rivall'd him out of his Apotheosis all this our Quacks are very sensible of and envy and no wonder they indeavour to reduce Physick to its pristine Renown because according to that Calculation they might expect to be inserted into the Catalogue of Physitians and claim a share in the Patent or Diploma which the Colledge does injoy to use our Authors phrase ex condigno these Quacks for the same reason excluded This Rabble seeing themselves thus shut out of doors have of late been knocking their heads together for a New Patent of which Master Thomson seems to give a lame account in the twentieth and last Chapter of his Book Entituled Some Animadversions upon the late attempt to procure a Patent from his Gracious Majesty for the Erecting a Colledge of Chymical Physitians And here I cannot but take notice of His Sacred Majesties great Prudence together with His Exceeding care for the good of his Subjects whose lives he is so tender of that His Majesty would not intrust them in the desperate hands of unskilful Empiricks we are all concerned to give our most Humble thanks to our most Gracious Soveraign that this Design never went beyond an attempt but that this Monster was stifled in the birth and proved Abortive which otherwise was like to prey upon and devour us under the protection of Authority Notwithstanding our Authour has the confidence to say that Never was there a more Just Honest Desirable and usefull Enterprize set upon in this Nation This last Hypocritical strain of his seems to be taken out of the late Rebels Declarations wherein under the most specious pretenses of Justice and Loyalty they hid the most Desperate Treason which when the mask was taken of appeared in its own bloody Colours And therefore I fear my Friend has lost his jest since all men are sufficiently awake to discover his Hypocrisie that desires to betray so many innocent lives under the pretense of preserving them by Physick Thus are the best of Virtues counterfeited by the worst of Vices and those that have the worst ends are necessitated to guild them over with the fairest shews or else they would never be swallowed The like carriage in our new-found Chymists did for a time deceive some honest men into a good opinion of the undertaking who when under the honey they perceived the sting drew back from the Confederacy and are become their greatest Opposers just as it fared with some honest heatted men who had been drawn in and out of good Principles had sided with the Factious in our late troubles yet when the blackness of their designs appeared they proved the most Zealous Loyallists I am inclin'd to make use of this comparison as very pertinent to my present purpose for just as the late Rebels Declared they would make His late Majejesty of Blessed Memory a Glorious King so these Jugglers pretending To Regulate and Reform the present Enormous Abuses in this Excellent Spagyrick Science talk of Advancing it to be Queen Regent in Physick whil'it their real intention is to dethrone Her and set up themselves I Wonder much at the impertinence of these Reformers Do not we all know that Chymistry is already fixt upon a good and sure fundation If their design had been honest as it is found rotten and fallacious to what purpose I pray should it be put down in one place to be set up in another I would have these Jugglers know and indeed they know it full well there is already Erected a Colledge of Chymicall Physitians for I dare say there are none amongst our Doctors that will not own this Epithite and I am sure none more justly deserve it Besides for a further Encouragement and to shew a particular countenance to this Noble Art His Majesty hath caused a peculiar Elaboratory of his own to be Erected which is managed by Monsieur Febure a Person of known Eminency and Parts who hath approved himself to the World to be a most Able Artist So that these Up-starts must intrude partly upon his right as well as upon the Company of Apothecaries and cannot justly be admitted Operators their design being under that notion to become Physitians The business of this new Patent was carried on by Subscriptions to a Petition which being speciously penn'd invited some few of Note to favour the Design but as I intimated before they did upon second and better thoughts re-demand their hands The number of Subscribers of all sorts as Master Odowds List informs me did never exceed five and thirty and when the forementioned Persons had withdrawn there were left behind as Master Thomson confesses Certain very illiterate persons that were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chymici umbratiles mock Chymists no whit exercised in Anatomy and Botanicks inexpert in the History of Diseases c. And these Petitioners pray for a Patent that they may be admitted in a Lawfull way to make good that Excellent Character Master Thomson has given them I hope I need not make any Apology to those Ingenious and Worthy Men who out of their forward and true zeal to Pyrotechny at first consented I am confident they themselves will acquit me that nothing in this Treatise is directed against them it must needs appear that where I mention any as concern'd with Master Thomson I mean only those whom he himself hath confest to be very illiterate persons They may likewise be assured as to what relates to my self I shall ever be ready to give a perfect Testimony of a true and real respect to them as persons whom I know without any sinister ends and interest to