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A64416
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Some papers writ in the year 1664 In answer to a letter, concerning the practice of physick in England. By Dr. C. T. Published at the request of a friend and several fellows of the College of Physicians.
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Terne, Christopher, 1620-1673.
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1670
(1670)
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Wing T760; ESTC R220666
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33,486
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59
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SOME PAPERS Writ in the Year 1664. In Answer to a LETTER Concerning the PRACTICE of PHYSICK IN ENGLAND By Dr. C. T. Published at the Request of a Friend and several Fellows of the College of Physicians LONDON Printed for James Allestry at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCLXX For my Worthy and much Honoured Friend the Author of the following Discourse Sir I Own a very great Obligation for those Papers you were pleased to entrust me with so freely as you did and at the first request and though it be now five or six years since you writ them yet I know they will be hugely welcome to the publick and the World will be informed that what is now prosecuted is in truth a matter of consequence and not a caprice of young unpractis'd heads as some endeavour to render it but managed seriously by men of the ablest of the Profession and worthy of the care and consideration of our Superiours And pray give me leave in a few words to acquaint you with the occasion I had to desire them of you at first It was my good fortune not long since to be in the Company of five or six persons not only considerable for their Estates and Interest in the City but likewise for their mature understanding of business as they were discoursing of seueral matters relating to the Trade both of the City and Nation in general it happened that one past through the room in which they sat to go up a pair of stairs that lead into a Chamber where the only Son of the Gentleman at whose House they were then lay under some little Aguish distemper One of the Company that spyed him saluted him by his name which occasioned another to demand who it was to whom the Gentleman of the House replyed it was his Apothecary gone up to visit his Son who was at that time a little indisposed whereupon another ask't the rest if they had seen two Discourses lately publisht by two very eminent Members of the College of Physicians which says he the Apothecary's passing by put me in mind of one besides himself said he had seen and read them and added frankly they seemed in his judgment very judiciously writ and very much to be considered by all that regarded their healths so they left off a little their former discourse and began to enter into the matter of those Books and the persons that read them represented to the Company some of the most important passages as their memories served whilst they were thus discoursing the Apothecary came down and was called by the Master of the House to this part of their Conference To do him right he spoke very civilly and told the Gentlemen he hoped all these appearances of difference between the Colledge and them would soon pass over and presently took leave and went away After he was gone one among the rest a very grave man who had sat all the while silent and heard what was produc't out of these Books began very solemnly to declare that since health was one of the greatest goods of life and that which alone gives as it were their being so to all the rest and since it was so much the interest of a Prince to preserve his people in strength and vigour he profest he could not understand how that reconcilement of these differences between the Physicians and the Apothecaries which so much concern the lives and healths of the Kings Subjects could ever be so well made up as the person that was gone said he hoped to see For said he if what has been alledged out of these Books here be true there has been too long already a foul and shameful abuse put upon the people by the present method of practising Physick as it now so he phrased it joggs on between the Physician and Apothecary and that since those able and well-known Physicians had so freely and honestly of themselves proposed ways of redress and so far opened the eyes of all men to discern the mockeries they have been gulled with so long he said it was too late for them now easily to retreat And believed that all men who had read those Books would as well as he look upon such a composure as a new way only of continuing the former abuses under some more artificial and secret disguise But whatever said he may be done out of Conscience I am sure they shall destroy their interest by it and as long as ever Apothecaries continue practising as they do so long shall the most gainful and secure part of practice come into their hands by means of the Bills they formerly have and daily will receive from them and nothing remain for the Physician but such sollicitous and extream Cases where the Apothecary shall vouchsafe to call him in in which his own credit shall every moment run as great a fortune as the Patients life For said he how many men in this Town have been already or ever shall be intended by the Physicians as Apothecaries only we in spight of common course they now take to hinder it shall to save charge and expence of Physick always esteem and make use of as a sort of cheaper Doctors except only in such extremities where our lives are in manifest danger And I have often wondred that so great a Company of prudent men should do such things every day which if we in our particular Trades should suffer we should not only be laught at but others of the same way would presently endeavour to obstruct or punish For I have often observed my self to tell truth when I have been with my Physician either for my own concern or any of my Family and have received good by what has been prescribed my Apothecary has often recommended the same and repeated it again without the knowledg of the Doctor and at other times told my Wife of an excellent course against the Scurvy ordered by an eminent Physician and named him and sometimes commended a Powder of another Doctors against the Worms for my Children which he said he had by him All which things I noted to be so prejudicial to the Physician that I could not choose but wonder that Physicians would so carelesly expose the fruit of all their time and studies and put every day the best of their Trade out of their own hands into anothers who had so little consideration of them And this indeed wholly deterred me from breeding one of my Sons a Physician since I saw how easily every good Medicine that my Doctor had came into the hands of my Apothecary for a fee or two and after that both I and all my Friends could readily command it and Mr. Doctor never the wiser When this Gentleman had done we began freely to tell one another being all Tradesmen who knew as well the difficulty of getting as the use and consequence of money how it was customary with us to send to our Apothecaries only unless where
the danger was very great to avoid the charge and expence of Physicians Not but that we all concluded it would be better to have the advice of a Physician at the very first if they would so order the matter that we might address our selves as reasonably to them as we now can to our Apothecary forasmuch as the greatest diseases have small beginnings and it were more comfortable to apply our selves where we may be as well advised of the nature of our present indisposition and what it is like to come to as receive what is proper either to cure or prevent it which said they on all hands is confest the Physician is more able to do than an Apothecary else should we never fly to him where we fear a danger as now we do I then took occasion to tell them that the principal design aimed at in those Books was to exhibit such a method as might lessen the expence of Physick to the people more then half in half and to shew that the Apothecary by his excessive prices and by his unnecessary and frequent repetitions of chargeable Medicines besides sees which some of them take and expect or else they think they are not kindly used amounted often to three times as much as they could hope to have saved in fees by not going to the Physician and farther added that a worthy Friend of mine a Physician had an excellent discourse by him to advance this proposition and enforce what had been already made publick They commanded me to importune you for it which since you are pleased so readily to consent to you have a great deal more obliged all the World in it than me although I am as much as any can be SIR Your most affectionate and obliged Servant ERRATA PAg. 9. lin 18. read Fevers lin 25. Physician pag. 13. lin 24. r. most of us have been Travellers p. 17. l. 11. r. they would p. 35. the last line r. by Custom and leave out the following by pag. 37. l. 18. r. their p. 41. l. 9. r. it proved p. 43. l. 4. that Roman p. 46. l. 4. Prujean Sir I Doe assure you I defer much to your kindness or to your judgement or to both in that I am contented you should do what you will with part of those papers I writt in 64 but since some of those people who invaded the profession of Physick and railed at learning and the Colledge with all that confidence that great ignorance uses to enable bold Knaves with are dead or sunk into that contempt such men at last must fall into I would have all that which concerns their Charecters wholly left out nor am I at all willing that the reformation of our faculty which I there designed should as yet be made publick For although I have been several times confirmed by better judgements than my own that it is a rational way to improve the usefullnesse of our profession as much as by the industry of a Society of men learned and most capable of such an undertaking it is possible to be done yet I do not think the age or the world we live in very susceptible of such propositions now The Charity there designed to supply all the poor of the Cities of London and Westminster with advice and some of them with medicines gratis and the better supplying and serving the sick in those Hospitals we have would but be looked upon as a decoy to bring in benefactours whose bounty and Charity might be perverted to luxurious uses and the care that is offered at to provide against the slaughters every day made by ignorant Quacks and Mountebancks and yet to secure all the encouragements that can reasonably be asked to any that are really possessed of any thing that may be useful to the recovery or comfort of those that are afflicted with sickness would be looked upon but as a design to Monopolise physick to the Colledge and to invest the Physitians with a power to enslave Chyrurgeons and Apothecaries Alas Sir we live in an age where to prescribe any bounds is to violate magna Charta we would all be Kings but States-men we are all nor can any of those that are really so with so much confidence venture to cure any disease in a man as the blew aprons in a Coffe-house shall all those in the State for it is the humour now to affect to be wisest out of the Sphear that God Nature and Education have placed us in and we all think ourselves able and are busie to reforme every thing but that which is really our duty to endeavour the amendment of I am sure you cannot but meet with occasions every day to confirme these observations And this I confess makes me think diversly from what I finde the general opinion to be That it is an age for the advancement and improvement of knowledge I rather fear our tumbling into the greatest barbarity and the most profound ignorance the way to solid knowledge by cultivating of our reasons and inuring them to compare compute and estimate well begins now to be wholly despised the young blades who have truanted at School and debauched at an University if they have acquired but rongue enough to rally the ancient learning and talk of experiments will disturbe the gravest Societies with their impertinenties silence the most learned and think themselves the only dictators in universal learning and if they are so unfortunate to be endowed with wit and good natural parts they turn every thing that is sober into Ridiculous and go out Doctors in Atheisme Our municipal Lawyers have a bar that hath hitherto kept ignorant invaders at some distance in their profession but Women Weavers and Coblers think themselves able to comprehend all the mysteries in Divinity and all the reason of Physick Zeal and good meaning may excuse them in their Divinity but I am deceived if any thing but pride and the greatest folly can be alledged for their Physick How authoritatively will a Nurse with winde and vapours give you the causes of all diseases and their Symptomes but an Apothecaries Prentice with Fermentation confounds the admiring Customers who take him for a very priest of Apollo pronouncing from his Tripode whilest a learned and a rational Physitian especially if he have the misfortune of being modest is looked upon at the best but as a weak and a timorous man if he hath the good fortune to be counted a safe man he may perhaps have some few patients but the Crowdes for the most part follow the boasting and the lying Quacks and although they find themselves still cheated by them yet a new one or the same with some circumstances a little disguised shall cheate them over again how often even in our age hath the cheats and knaveries of the pretended Chymists been detected even with the ruin of some of the admirers of it yet that vanity wants not its Patrons now and sober men who knowing the usefullness of