Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [54]
At the same time, the clash also cast doubt on Grew's books, and on his own identity as an author. Francis Moult sought out a copy of Grew's Latin treatise, had it translated into English, and "prefixed such a Title to it, as might induce the Reader, to take it for the Dr's own doing." Then, "that he might the better get the Trade entirely into his own Hands," he printed off i,5oo copies and distributed them gratis to customers who bought his version of the salt. What had originated as a learned Latin treatise for physicians had now become an advertisement for an empiric -and, worse still, an instruction manual likely to be believed and put to use by lay readers. As Moult explained in a preface that he quietly added to Grew's original, medicines very often attained popularity through being introduced with "printed Directions" and "Certificates" of cures. Grew's work served this purpose admirably. He justified appropriating the discourse by claiming that its learning would forestall potentially dangerous misuses of the drug. His was therefore an act of social responsibility
Grew was horrified by all this. To his eyes, not only was the translation an unauthorized usurpation, insolent and dangerous. It was also full of errors and omissions. For example, it lacked the original's licenses from the College of Physicians and the Royal Society, and it omitted Grew's politic dedication to those two authorities. Not least, that dedication had staked Grew's own claim to priority, pinning it to the Society's record of his experiments at the time of the seawater controversy. Moult's version of the medical receipts also contained a multitude of errors -errors that a lay reader would follow unwittingly, quite possibly killing children. Josiah Peter, a friend and fellow physician, even threatened Moult with a lawsuit not only for "the Wrong he had done the Author" but also for physically endangering the king's subjects. In all, Grew's camp denounced the translation as a "scurvy Libel." It seemed, mused one ex president of the Royal Society (perhaps Christopher Wren), that "this Shop-Chymist" was "both grossly ignorant, and of an ill Mind." A response was essential to "vindicate the Honour" of the author himself, but also to restore that of the College and the Society. Otherwise readers were likely to conclude that both were "unfit to write or authorize a Book of this nature." Grew even went on to claim that readers might come to distrust all such books. They might "suppose there is little Sincerity or solid Truth in any Books of this kind," he warned, "but that Philosophy and Physick themselves are a mere jingle." In the context of a piratical trade this apparently extreme proposition made a certain sense. And this being so, Grew announced it his duty to rap the knuckles of "this Interloper" so as to forestall such a possibility.14
And so he did. Grew issued an authorized version of his treatise, translated by another physician named Joseph Bridges and with new testimonials byPeter. It made clear that the experiments it retailed were "entirely" Grew's own. Of the therapeutic receipts of the second part, it remarked likewise that "it's easy to observe his Property too, in many of these." Even the Archbishop of Canterbury had apparently approved Grew's "very useful Discovery's Bridges took care to restate Grew's caution to readers to consult a physician before using the salt, and drove the point home by reciting at length the "Egregious FALSIFICATIONS" to be found in Moult's version. For example, the spurious version apparently recommended under- and overdoses (physicians of the time often complained that apothecaries confused the numbers sixteen, sixty, and six hundred). And at some points Moult had failed to change the originalwhere he should have: Grew had not stated a specific dosage of opiates for cholera, for example, but Moult, "speaking to all in common," should have been explicit. These