Wesley Corpus

Your affectionate brother, or, if you choose it rather, Your humble servant. To a Clergyman [14] TULLAMORE, May 4, 1748. REVEREND SIR,--I have at present neither leisure nor inclination to enter into a formal controversy; but you will give me leave just to offer a few loose hints relating to the subject of last night's conversation. I. 1. Seeing life and health are things of so great importance, it is without question highly expedient that physicians should have all possible advantages of learning and education. 2. That trial should be made of them by competent judges before they practice publicly. 3. That after such trial they be authorized to practice by those who are empowered to convey that authority. 4. And that, while they are preserving the lives of others, they should have what is sufficient to sustain their own. 5. But, supposing a gentleman bred at the University in Dublin, with all the advantages of education, after he has undergone all the usual trials, and then been regularly authorized to practice,-- 6. Suppose, I say, this physician settles at --for some years, and yet makes no cures at all; but, after trying his skill on five hundred persons, cannot show that he has healed one, many of his patients dying under his hands, and the rest remaining just as they were before he came,-- 7. Will you condemn a man who, having some little skill in physic and a tender compassion for those who are sick or dying all around him, cures many of those without fee or reward whom the doctor could not cure-- 8. At least, did not; which is the same thing as to the case in hand, were it only for this reason--because he did not go to them, and they would not come to him. 9. Will you condemn him, because he has not learning or has not had an university education What then He cures those whom the man of learning and education cannot cure. 10. Will you object, that he is no physician nor has any authority to practice I cannot come into your opinion. I think medicus est qui medetur, 'he is a physician who heals,' and that every man has authority to save the life of a dying man. But, if you only mean he has no authority to take fees, I contend not; for he takes none at all.