of a physician then living. The interdict
had little efficacy, and at last became so
obsolete that in the sixth year of William the
Third an act passed which was made
perpetual in the ninth of George the First,
exempting apothecaries from service in parish
offices and upon juries, because unless so
exempt they cannot perform the trusts
reposed in them as they ought, nor attend the
sick with such diligence as is required.

The practice of the apothecary was, in fact,
slowly becoming a necessity imposed by
the growth of the middle orders of society.
The physicians in this country have not
altered their position with relation to the
population as the population has changed its
position with regard to them. They have
maintained themselves, wisely we think, as
a class of special counsellors, with counsellor's
fees, not often to be lowered without loss
of dignity. Therefore, the apothecary has
been called upon to adapt himself as a
professional adviser, to the wants of the million.
He has done so. On the continent of Europe
it is the physician who has done so; he is, in
many thousands of cases, just what the
apothecary in this country has been called upon
to make himself, and has through much
trouble and conflict come to be. Even in
Scotland, the same pressure upon the apothecary
has not produced out of him the same
thing. Scotch surgeons were examined in
medicine, and entered as matter of course
into general practice, when in England
surgeons were confined — as they still are — to
surgical examinations, and obtained license
to deal only with a class of cases which do
not form more than one in ten of all that
demand treatment, while the physicians stood
upon their dignity, wisely, as we have said;
but in a way that has made the production
of a class of general practitioners quite
unavoidable.

The Society of Apothecaries, then, obtained
its separate incorporation, and seceded from
the grocers in the year sixteen hundred and
fifteen, three years prior to the first publication
of a Pharmacopœia, and one hundred
and thirty years before the surgeons were
dissociated from the Barbers' Company. The
first demand upon the apothecary was to
prescribe; he was to be, in Adam Smith's words,
"the physician to the poor at all times, and
to the rich whenever the disease was without
danger." To unite the calling of apothecary
with that of the surgeon, was to become what
the public wished to have, namely, a man
available on easy variable terms for daily use
in every emergency.

In our days this problem has reached, or
is reaching, a most excellent solution. But
it has not been worked out without difficulty.
The physicians not seeing that they fought in
vain against necessity arising from a social
want which they were not themselves
prepared to meet, not only contested the right of
apothecaries to advise, but even in the chafe
of controversy went so far as to " enact and
decree that no surgeon nor apothecary, nor
any such artificer, who has exercised any less
liberal art, or bound to servitude has served
his apprenticeship in a shop, be admitted into
the class of candidates, or of fellows; lest,
haply, if such be elected into the college, we
shall not sufficiently appear to have consulted
either our own dignity, or the honour of the
universities of this kingdom."

War to the knife was thus declared, and
during one or two generations led in some
instances to very scandalous results. The
physicians, judging it derogatory to
compound their medicines, were often obliged to
be extremely heedful of the disposition
towards them of any apothecary to whom
they might send their prescriptions. Active
pills were maliciously made inert by the use
perhaps of liquorice in place of steel and
aloes; the quarrel was of more consideration
than the patient.

When physician and apothecary were good
friends, and the physician was a man who, in
the phrase of the trade — for here we must
needs call it a trade — could write well,
something like this was the result. We quote
only one day's medicine, prescribed by a
physician and administered by an apothecary
to a fever patient. The list of medicine
given on each other day is quite as long, and
every bolus is found in the same way duly
specified in " Mr. Parret the apothecary's
bill, sent in to Mr. A. Dalley, who was a
mercer on Ludgate Hill." We quote the
supply for the fourth day's illness:
August 10.
Another Pearl Julap            .     .  0  6  10
Another Hypnotick Draught        .  0  2  0
A Cordial Bolus     .      .      .      .  0  2  0
A Cordial Draught         .     .      .  0  1  8
A Cordial Pearl Emulsion    .      .  0  4  6
Another Pearl Julap             .     .  0  6  8
Another Cordial Julap    .    .      .  0  3  8
Another Bolus               .     .      .  0  2  4
Another Draught            .     .     .  0  1  8
A Pearl Julap            .     .     .     .  0  4  6
A Cordial Draught      .       .        .  0  2  0
An Anodyne Mixture         .          .  0  4  6
A Glass of Cordial Spirits    .        .  0  2 0
Another Mucilage        .       .        .  0  3  4
A Cooling Mixture       .       .        .   0  3  6
A Blistering Plaister to the Neck  .   0  2  6
Two more of the same to the Arms 0  5  0
Another Apozem   .      .      .        .  0  3  6
Spirit of Hartshorn       .      .         .  0  0  6
Plaister to dress the Blisters         .  0  0  6

One day's medical treatment is here
represented, as it was often to be met with in the
palmy days of physic, when
Some fell by laudanum, and some by steel,
And death in ambush lay in ev'ry pill.
Then truly might Dr. Garth write of his
neighbours how
The piercing caustics ply their spiteful pow'r,
Emetics wrench, and keen cathartics scour.