Chronicles of Pharmacy, Vol. 1 (of 2)

VIII
PHARMACY IN GREAT BRITAIN.

British Pharmacy in Saxon England.

The condition of medicine and pharmacy in Saxon times has been carefully portrayed in three volumes published, in 1864, under the authority of the Master of the Rolls at the expense of the Treasury. These were edited by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne, M.A., and appeared under the title of “Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft.” Many old documents were translated and explained, and from these the ideas of medicine in these islands a thousand years ago were made manifest.

Mr. Cockayne gave at length a Saxon Herbarium, written, he supposed, about the year 1000, and professing to be a translation from Apuleius, a Roman physician of the second century, with additions from Dioscorides, and some from native science. A few specimens will suffice to show the character of the herb treatment in England before the Conquest.

Cress, Watercress (Nasturtium officinale).

1. This wort is not sown, but it is produced of itself in wylls (springs), and in brooks, also it is written that in some lands it will grow against walls.

2. In the case that a man’s hair fall off take juice of the wort which one nameth nasturtium, and by another name cress; put it on the nose; the hair shall wax (grow).

3. For sore of head, that is for scurf and for itch, take seed of this same wort and goose grease. Pound together. It draws from the head the whiteness of the scurf.

4. For soreness of the body (the Latin word is ad cruditatem, indigestion) take this same wort nasturtium, and pennyroyal; seethe them in water, give to drink; then amendest thou the soreness of the body, and the evil departs.

5. Against swellings, take this same wort, and pound it with oil; lay over the swellings; then take leaves of the same wort, and lay them thereto.

6. Against warts, take this same wort and yeast, pound together, lay thereto, they be soon taken away.

Maythe (Anthemis nobilis).

For sore of eyes, let a man take ere the upgoing of the sun, the wort which is called Chamaimelon, and by another name Maythe, and when a man taketh it let him say that he will take it against white specks, and against soreness of the eyes; let him next take the ooze, and smear the eyes therewith.

Poppy (Papaver somniferum).

1. For sore of eyes, that is what we denominate blearedness, take the ooze of this wort, which the Greeks name Makona and the Romans Papaver album, and the Engles call white poppy, or the stalk with the fruit; lay it to the eyes.

2. For sore of temples or of the head, take ooze of this same wort, pound with vinegar, and lay upon the sore; it alleviates the sore.

3. For sleeplessness, take ooze of this same wort, smear the man with it, and soon thou sendest the sleep on him.

Many of the herbs named in the Herbarium were employed for other purposes than those for which they were used in later practice. Comfrey is recommended for one “bursten within.” It was to be roasted in hot ashes and mixed with honey; then to be taken fasting. But nothing is said of its bone-setting property. Mullein, subsequently famous as a pectoral medicine, is recommended in the Herbarium as an external application in gout, and to carry about to prevent the attacks of wild beasts. Dill is prescribed as a remedy against local itching; fennel in cough and sore bladder; and madder for broken legs, which it would cure in three days.

To prevent sea-sickness the traveller had to smear himself with a mixture of pennyroyal and wormwood in oil and vinegar. Peony laid over a lunatic would soon cause him to upheave himself whole; and vervain or verbena if carried on the person would ensure a man from being barked at by dogs.

A Professed Translation.

The next document presented is the Medicina de Quadrupedibus of Sextus Placitus, an unknown personage, who adds to the interest of his narrative by pretending that “a king of the Egyptians, Idpartus he was highten,” sent this treatise to the Emperor Octavius Cæsar, “for,” he said, “I wist thee worthy of this.” Probably this manuscript was not a translation at all; if it was, the pretended authors were almost certainly fictitious. Most of the instructions here given relate to the medicinal uses of animals. The idea that foxes’ lungs will strengthen ours is hardly dead yet. Here it is in this old Saxon document:—

“For oppressive hard drawn breathing, a fox’s lung sodden and put into sweetened wine, and administered, is wonderfully healthy.”

The fox had many other uses. Foxes’ grease would heal many kinds of sores. His sinews soaked in honey would cure a sore throat; his “naturam” wrapped round the head would banish headache; his “coillon” rubbed on warts would break them up and remove them; and dimness of sight could be relieved by his gall mingled with honey. The worst recipe is:

For disease of joints. Take a living fox and seethe him till the bones alone are left. Let the man go down therein frequently, and into another bath. Let him do so very oft. Wonderfully it healeth.

There are scores of cures from parts of animals, some of them very disgusting. A few more specimens of decent ones must suffice.

For oversleeping, a hare’s brain in wine is given for a drink. Wonderfully it amendeth.

To get sleep a goat’s horn laid under the head turneth waking into sleep.

For sleep lay a wolf’s head under the pillow; the unhealthy shall sleep.

Let those who suffer apparitions eat lion’s flesh; they will not after that suffer any apparition.

For any fracture, take a hound’s brain laid upon wool and bind upon the broken place for fourteen days; then will it be firmly amended, and there shall be a need for a firmer binding up.

If thou frequently smearest and touchest children’s gums with bitches’ milk, the teeth wax without sore.

Various Leechdoms.

Some “Fly-Leaf Leechdoms” of unknown authorship follow. In these information concerning the four humours is given, hot and cold, moist and dry remedies are distinguished, and we are told of the forty-five dies caniculares “in which no leech can properly give aid to any sick man.” It is carefully noted that the same disorder may occur from different causes, and quite scientifically the practitioner is advised to vary his treatment accordingly. Thus, for example, dealing with “host” (cough) we are told that “it hath a manifold access, as the spittles are various. Whilom it cometh of immoderate heat, whilom of immoderate cold, whilom of immoderate dryness.” The remedies must depend on the causes of the complaint. The “tokens” of “a diseased maw” of “a half head’s ache” (megrims) and of other distempers are set forth with graphic simplicity, and often sensible advice as to diet and medicine is given. But not infrequently the remedy may not be an easily procurable one. For instance “If one drink a creeping thing in water, let him cut open a sheep instantly and drink the sheep’s blood hot”; and “if a man will eat rind which cometh out of Paradise no venom will damage him.” The writer considerately adds that such rind is “hard gotten.”

The following is apparently adapted from Alexander of Tralles, or some other of the later classical authors.

“Against gout and against the wristdrop; take the wort hermodactylus, by another name titulosa, that is in our own language the great crow leek; take this leek’s heads and dry them thoroughly, and take thereof by weight of two and a half pennies, and pyrethrum and Roman rinds, and cummin, and a fourth part of laurel berries, and of the other worts, of by weight of a halfpenny, and six pepper corns, unweighed, and grind all to dust, and add wine two egg-shells full; this is a true leechcraft. Give it to the man to drink till that he be hole.”

A few other recipes in the Leechbooks may be quoted:—

For headache take a vessel full of leaves of green rue, and a spoonful of mustard seed, rub together, add the white of an egg, a spoonful, that the salve may be thick. Smear with a feather on the side which is not sore.

For ache of half the head (megrim) take the red nettle of one stalk, bruise it, mingle with vinegar and the white of an egg, put all together, anoint therewith.

For mistiness of the eyes take juice of fennel and of rose and of rue, and of dumbledores’ honey; (the dumbledore is apis bombinatrix); and kid’s gall, mixed together. Smear the eyes with this. Again, take live periwinkles burnt to ashes; and let him mix the ashes with dumbledores’ honey.

For sore and ache of ears take juice of henbane, make it lukewarm, and then drip it on the ear; then the sore stilleth. Or, take garlic and onion and goose fat, melt them together, squeeze them on the ear. Or, take emmets’ eggs, crush them, squeeze them on the ear.

For the upper tooth ache:—Take leaves of withewind (convolvulus), wring them on the nose. For the nether tooth ache, slit with the tenaculum till they bleed.

For coughs, mugwort, marrubium, yarrow, red nettle, and other herbs are recommended generally boiled in ale, sometimes in milk.

Pock disease (small-pox) is dealt with, but not very seriously. It is of interest because the classical writers do not mention it. The Arab Rhazes wrote a treatise on it about A.D. 923. A few herb drinks are prescribed in the Leechbooks, and to prevent the pitting “one must delve away each pock with a thorn, then drip wine or alder drink within them, then they will not be seen.”

Against lice:—One pennyweight of quicksilver and two of old butter.

Against itch:—Take ship tar, and ivy tar, and oil, rub together, add a third part of salt; smear with that.

In case a man should overdrink himself, let him drink betony in water before his other drink.

For mickle travelling over land, lest he tire, let him take mugwort to him in hand or put it in his shoe, lest he should weary, and when he will pluck it, before the upgoing of the sun, let him say these words, “I will take thee, artemisia, lest I be weary on the way.” Sign it with the sign of the cross when thou pullest it up.

Helias to Alfred.

In one of the Leechbooks translated by Mr. Cockayne is found a letter on medicines from Helias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to King Alfred the Great. Mr. Cockayne believes it to be authentic. There was a patriarch of that name at Jerusalem contemporary with Alfred, and the medicines he recommends are such as were obtainable in the Syrian drug shops at that date. It is to be presumed that the information was given in reply to a request for some recipes from the king. Helias recommends scammony, ammoniacum, gum dragon, aloes, galbanum, balsam, petroleum, triacle, and alabaster. Of petroleum he writes:—

“It is good to drink simple for inward tenderness, and to smear on outwardly on a winter’s day, since it hath very much heat; hence one shall drink it in winter; and it is good if for anyone his speech faileth, then let him take it; and make the mark of Christ under his tongue, and swallow a little of it. Also if a man become out of his wits, then let him take part of it, and make Christ’s mark on every limb, except the cross on the forehead, that shall be of balsam, and the other on the top of his head.”

The patriarch had strong faith in Theriaca, and the directions he gives for its administration are minute, and would be explicit if he had only explained how much he meant by “a little bit.”

“Theriaca,” he says, “is a good drink for all inward tenderness, and the man who so behaves himself as is here said, he may much help himself. On the day on which he will drink Triacle he shall fast until midday, and not let wind blow on him that day; then let him go to the bath, let him sit there till he sweat; then let him take a cup, put a little warm water in it, then let him take a little bit of the triacle, and mingle with the water, and drain through some thin raiment, then drink it, and let him then go to his bed and wrap himself up warm, and so lie till he sweat well; then let him arise and sit up and clothe himself, and then take his meat at noon (three hours after midday), and protect himself earnestly against the wind that day; then I believe to God it will help the man much.”

Early English Medical Practice.

In the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, the great man of science, wrote on medicine, alchemy, magic, and astrology, as well as most other sciences. He believed that a universal remedy was attainable, and urged Pope Clement IV to give his powerful aid to its discovery. Nothing particular remains of his medical studies.

Gilbert Anglicanus, who was a contemporary of Bacon, and wrote a Compendium of Medicine, a tedious collection of the most fantastic theories of disease, was more advanced in pharmacy than in the treatment of disease. He describes at considerable length the manner of extinguishing mercury to make an ointment, recommending particularly the addition of some mustard seed to facilitate the process. He gives particulars of the preparation of the oil of tartar per deliquium, and proposes a solution of acetate of ammonia in anticipation of Mindererus four hundred years later. Gilbert’s formula is thus expressed:—

“Conteratur sal armoniacum minutim, et superinfundatur frequenter et paullatim acetum, et cooperiatur et moveatur, ut evanescet sal.”

Ant’s eggs, oil of scorpions, and lion’s flesh is his prescription for apoplexy, but he does not explain how the last ingredient was to be obtained in England. Several of his formulas are quoted in the first London Pharmacopœia. For the expulsion of calculi he prescribes the blood of a young goat which has been fed on diuretic herbs such as persil and saxifrage.

Chaucer, whose writings belong to the latter half of the fourteenth century, has left on record a graphic picture of the “Doctour of Phisike” of his day, and the old poet is as gently sarcastic about his pilgrim’s “science” as a writer of five hundred years later might have been. “He was grounded in astronomy,” we are told, and—

His library was a wonderful one considering the rarity of books at that time.

The doctor was careful about his food, “his study was but little on the Bible,” he dressed well, but was inclined to save in his expenses.

The original of Chaucer’s “Doctour of Phisike” has been sometimes supposed to have been the well-known John of Gaddesden, physician to Edward II, Professor of Medicine at Merton College, Oxford, a Prebendary of the Church, and the author of “Rosa Anglicana.” This work, although full of absurdities and crude ideas of medicine and pharmacy, became the popular medical treatise in England, was translated into several European languages, and reprinted many times in this country during the two hundred years which followed its first appearance. The author named it the Rose, he says, because, as the rose has five sepals, his book is divided into five parts; and as the rose excels all other flowers, so his book is superior to all other treatises on medicine. It was probably published between 1310 and 1320.

John of Gaddesden’s work well illustrates the pharmacy of the period, for he was great on drugs. He taught that aqua vitæ (brandy) was a polychrest, or complete remedy; that swines’ excrement was a sovereign cure for hæmorrhage; that a sponge steeped in a mixture of vinegar, roses, wormwood, and rain-water, and laid on the stomach, would check vomiting and purging; that toothache and other pains might be cured by saying a Paternoster and an Ave for the souls of the father and mother of St. Phillip; a boar’s bladder, taken when full of urine and dried in an oven, is recommended as a cure for epilepsy; a wine of fennel and parsley for blindness; and a mixture of whatever herbs came into his mind—for example, “apium, petroselinum, endive, scolopendron, chicory, liver-wort, scariola, lettuce, maidenhair, plantain, ivory shavings, sandal wood, violets, and vinegar”—is ordered as a digestive drink. Add to such senseless recipes as these a number of equally unintelligent charms, and a fair idea of the condition of medical science in England in the fourteenth century is obtained. It does not compare at all favourably with the condition to which the Arabs in Spain had elevated the art two and three hundred years before.

Bernard of Gordon, who wrote from Montpellier, but is believed to have been a Scotchman, was the author of the “Lilium Medicinæ,” published about 1307 or 1309. The work was known to John of Gaddesden, for he quotes from it. Perhaps he had it in his mind when he observed that the rose excels all other flowers. Mainly it was a compilation from Arabic writers with the addition of many scholastic subtleties and astrological reveries. It is noticeable in this author and in John of Gaddesden how careful both are to distinguish between the treatment of the rich and the poor. The latter, for example, states that dropsy can be cured by spikenard, but he advises practitioners never to give this costly medicine without first receiving pay for it. Gordon recommends for a poor person’s cough that he should be ordered to hold his breath frequently during the day for as long as possible, and if that does not cure he is to breathe fire.

John Mirfield also wrote his “Breviarium Bartholomei” in the latter part of the fourteenth century. Dr. Norman Moore in his “History of the Study of Medicine” has freely quoted from this old work, and gives several facsimile pages from some of the earliest manuscript copies of it. Dr. Moore regards the Breviarium with special interest as it is the first book on medicine in any way connected with his hospital, the oldest in London. Mirfield, relating some of the cures performed by his master, mentions that a woman came to him having lost her speech. The master rubbed her palate with some “theodoricon emperisticon” and with a little “diacostorium.” She soon recovered. An apothecary brought a youth to the hospital with a carbuncle on his face, and his throat and neck swollen beyond belief. The master said the youth must go home to die. “Is there then no remedy?” asked the apothecary. The physician replied, “I believe most truly that if thou wert to give tyriacum in a large dose, there would be a chance that he might live.” The apothecary gave two doses of ʒij. each, which caused a profuse perspiration, and in due course the youth recovered. He advises smelling and swallowing musk, aloes wood, storax, calamita, and amber to prevent infection in cold weather, and in warm weather sandal wood, roses, camphor, acetositas citri, sour milk, and vinegar, taking syrup of vinegar in the morning and syrup of violets at midday. For gout he prescribes an ointment the principal constituent of which is goose grease. The preparation of this remedy is explained metrically. The verses begin thus:—

Rheumatism was to be treated with olive oil, and the pharmacist is directed to warm it while he repeats the Psalm “Quare fremerunt gentes” as far as “Postula a me et dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam,” then the Gloria and two prayers. This recitation was to be repeated seven times. There were no clocks available at that time, and this therefore was the method of prescribing the length of an operation. Dr. Moore says he finds this direction would cover about a quarter of an hour.

Medical treatises in verse were frequent and popular in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are several in the British Museum. A curious specimen is preserved in the Royal Library at Stockholm, and it is reproduced in readable English in “Archeologia,” Vol. XXX, with notes by the translator, Mr. George Stephens, and by Dr. Pettigrew. They both believe it was written in the fourteenth century. It consists of 1485 lines. Of these it will suffice to give the first four, and one specimen of its sections. It begins thus:—

The following is entitled in the margin “Hed werk.”

Two other specimens of these early poetical recipes from other authors may be quoted:—

The Early English Drug Trade.

The development of pharmacy as a separate organisation was later in England than on the Continent, and was very gradual. In the Norman period the retail trade in drugs and spices and most other commodities was in the hands of the mercers. These were, in fact, general shopkeepers, deriving their designation from merx, merchandise. They attended fairs and markets, and in the few large towns had permanent booths. Under the Plantagenets a part of the south side of “Chepe” roughly extending from where is now Bow Church to Friday Street was occupied by their stores, and was known as the Mercery. Behind these booths were the meadows of Crownsild, sloping down to what it may be hoped was then the silvery Thames. Probably sheep and cattle fed on the pastures which Cannon Street and Upper Thames Street have since usurped.

But English traders were beginning to feel their feet, and other guilds were pushing forward. The Easterlings (East Germans from the Baltic coasts and the Hanse towns) brought goods from the East and placed them on the English market, and the Pepperers and Spicers distributed them to the public. The Easterlings, it may be mentioned, have left us the word sterling to commemorate their sojourn among us. The Mercers meanwhile were getting above the shop. They were becoming merchant adventurers, and had no desire to contest the trade in small things with the Pepperers of Sopers’ Lane, or the Spicers of Chepe. Their other small wares fell into the hands of the Haberdashers.

There is evidence of a guild of Pepperers in London as early as 1180. As a company they appear to have been ruined by the demands of Edward III for subsidies for his French and Scottish campaigns. From their ashes, including those of the Spicerers, arose the Grocers, the sellers “en gros.” They are heard of in the fourteenth century, and were apparently incorporated by letters patent from Edward III in 1345, but their first known charter was granted by Henry VI in 1429, while in 1453 that King conferred on them the charge of the King’s beam, by which all imported merchandise was weighed, a charge of 1d. per 20 lbs. being authorised for the service. In 1457 they were given the exclusive power of garbling (cleansing and separating) drugs, spices, and other imported merchandise, and they also had the duty of examining the drugs and medicinal wares sold by the apothecaries. The law requiring certain drugs to be officially “garbled” before they could be sold was repealed by an Act passed in the sixth year of Queen Anne’s reign.

The earliest record of the exercise of their authority over apothecaries is found in 1456, when the minutes of the Company show that they imposed a fine on John Ashfield “for making untrue powder of ginger, cinnamon, and saunders.” Other similar items appear from time to time. In 1612 Mr. Lownes, apothecary to Prince Charles, complained to the Company that Michael Easen, a grocer-apothecary, “had supplied him with divers defective apothecaries’ wares,” and the offender was committed to the Poultry Comptoir.

Bucklersbury.

Bucklersbury was the centre and headquarters of the London drug trade, at least from the Tudor to the Hanoverian periods. Shakespeare in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” makes Falstaff refer to “the lisping hawthorn buds that come like women in men’s apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in sample time.” Stow (1598) says of this thoroughfare that “This whole street on both sides throughout is possessed of grocers and apothecaries.” Ben Jonson calls it “Apothecarie Street.” This dramatist in “Westward Ho!” makes Mrs. Tenderhook say “Go into Bucklersbury and fetch me two ounces of preserved melons; look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it.” Later in a self-asserting poem to his bookseller, Ben Jonson says of one of his books, objecting to vulgar advertising methods,

In Charles II’s reign Mouffet speaks of Bucklersbury being replete with physic, drugs, and spicery, and says it was so perfumed at the time of the plague with the pounding of spices, melting of gums, and making of perfumes, that it escaped that great plague. A quotation from Pennant in Cassell’s “Old and New London” shows that in the reign of William III Bucklersbury was the resort of ladies of fashion to purchase teas, furs, and other Indian goods; and the king is said to have been angry with the queen for visiting these shops, which appear from some lines of Prior to have been sometimes perverted to places of intrigue.

The street acquired its name from a family called the Bokerells or Buckerells, who lived there in the thirteenth century. Stow gives a different account. He states that there was a tower in the street named Carnet’s Tower, and that a grocery named Buckle who had acquired it was assisting in pulling it down, intending to erect a goodly frame of timber in its place, when a part fell on him, which so sore bruised him that it shortened his life.

A Chemist’s Advertisement in the Seventeenth Century.

A London chemist’s advertisement (about 1680–1690) runs thus:—

“Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, chemist in London, Southampton Street, Covent Garden, continues faithfully to prepare all sorts of remedies, chemical and galenical. He hopes that his friends will continue their favours. Good cordials can be procured at his establishment, as well as Royal English drops, and other articles such as Powders of Kent, Zell, and Contrajerva, Cordial red powder, Gaskoins powder, with and without bezoar, English smelling salts, true Glauber’s salt, Epsom salt, and volatile salt of ammonia, stronger than the former. Human skull and hartshorn, essence of Ambergris, volatile essence of lavender, musk and citron, essence of viper, essence for the hair, vulnerary balsam, commendeur, balsam for apoplexy, red spirit of purgative cochliaria, spirit of white cochliaria, and others. Honey water, lavender water of two kinds, Queen of Hungary water, orange flower water, arquebusade.

“For the information of the curious, he is the only one in London who makes inflammable phosphorus, which can be preserved in water. Phosphorus of Bolognian stone, flowers of phosphorus, black phosphorus, and that made with acid oil, and other varieties. All unadulterated. Every description of good drugs he sells, wholesale and retail.

“Solid phosphorus, wholesale, 50s. an ounce, and retail, £3 sterling, the ounce.”

The English Apothecaries.

Although the Grocers were the recognised drug dealers of this country, apothecaries who were associated in their Guild were also recognised. Some authorities name Richard Fitznigel as apothecary to Henry II before he was made Bishop of London. But this evidence cannot be trusted. The first definite allusion to an apothecary in England occurs in 1345, when Edward III granted a pension of sixpence a day for life to Coursus de Gangeland, an apothecary of London, in recognition of his services in attending on the king during his illness in Scotland. The record of this grant is found in Rymer’s “Foedera,” which was not published until 1704, but Rymer was historiographer royal, appointed by William III, and his work was a compilation from official archives. An earlier mention of an apothecary is found in the Scottish Exchequer Rolls wherein it appears that on the death of Robert the Bruce, in 1329, payments were made to John the Apothecary, presumably for materials for embalming the king’s body. Dr. J. Mason Good, who wrote a “History of Medicine, so far as it relates to the Profession of the Apothecary,” in 1795, mentions, on the authority of Regner, that J. de Falcand de Luca publicly vended medicines in London in 1357, while Freind (“History of Medicine,” 1725) states that Pierre de Montpellier was appointed Apothecary to Edward III in 1360.

It is clear, therefore, that the apothecary was a familiar professional personage in England five hundred years ago. Conclusive evidence of his practice is given by Chaucer, who, in the Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales” (written in the last quarter of the fourteenth century), describing a “Doctour of Phisike” says—

The satirical suggestion of the mutual obligations of physicians and apothecaries has been familiar for all these centuries.

It seems certain that in Henry VIII’s reign the apothecaries were doing a considerable amount of medical practice, besides selling drugs. The Act of 1511 incorporating the College of Physicians and giving them the exclusive right to practise physic in London and for seven miles round, was largely used, if not intended, against apothecaries. In 1542, however, an Act was passed which rather modified the severe restrictions of the original statute, and under the new law apothecaries became more aggressive. In Mary’s reign the Physicians again got the legislative advantage, and there is a record in the archives of the College of Physicians (preserved by Dr. Goodall, who wrote “A History of the Proceedings of the College against Empiricks,” in 1684) stating that in Queen Elizabeth’s reign the President and Censors of the College summoned the Wardens of the Grocers’ Company and all the apothecaries of London and the suburbs to appear before them, “and enjoyned them that when they made a dispensation of medicine they should expose their several ingredients (of which they were composed) to open view in their shops for six or eight days that so the physicians passing by might judge of the goodness of them, and prevent their buying or selling any corrupt or decayed medicines.” The grocers and apothecaries do not appear to have raised any objection to this decree. Whether they obeyed it or not is not stated.

Incorporation of the Apothecaries.

The first Charter of Incorporation was granted to the apothecaries by James I in 1606, but this did not separate them from their old foes, the grocers. They continued their efforts, however, and with the aid of friends at Court they obtained a new Charter in 1617, which gave them an entirely independent existence as a City Guild under the title of the Society of the Apothecaries. This is the only London guild which has from its incorporation to the present time admitted only actual apothecaries to its fraternity.

Another peculiarity claimed by one of the Company’s historians (Dr. J. Corfe: “The Apothecary”) is that the Guild of Apothecaries is the only City Company which is called a Society. He believes that this may be attributed to the supposed fact that the corporation was modelled on a similar association founded at Naples in 1540 under the name of Societa Scientifica.

Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the King’s first physician, and Gideon de Laune, pharmacien or apothecary to the Queen, Anne of Denmark, were the supporters of the apothecaries in rescuing them from the control of the grocers. Both of these men deserve honourable mention in the chronicles of British pharmacy. It happens that both were of foreign origin and of the Protestant faith, two of that eminent crowd of immigrants of high principle and distinguished ability who served England so well in the seventeenth century when they found themselves “not wanted” in France.

Mayerne was a Swiss by birth, but a Frenchman by education and adoption, and had been physician to Henri IV. But he incurred the bitter animosity of the Paris Faculty, led by the fanatic Gui Patin, partly on account of his religious heresy, and partly because he prescribed chemical medicines. By a unanimous vote the Paris College of Physicians resolved in 1603 that he must not be met by any of its members in consultation. He continued, however, to practise in Paris until an English peer whom he had treated took him to London and introduced him to James I, who made him physician to the Queen. Mayerne, however, soon returned to Paris, but in 1611 he settled in London on the invitation of the King, who made him his first physician. He had a great deal to do with the compilation of the first London Pharmacopœia, and is reputed to have introduced calomel and black wash into medical practice. Subsequently he was appointed physician to Charles I and Queen Henriette, but after the execution of the King he retired into private life, and though nominally physician to Charles II he never practised at that Court. He died at Chelsea in 1665.

Gideon de Laune was also a man of considerable influence. Dr. Corfe regards him as almost the founder of the Society of Apothecaries, but Mr. Barrett, who recently wrote a history of that Society, suggests that he could not have been so much thought of by his contemporaries, as he was only elected to the Mastership some years after the Charter had been granted, and then only after a contest. At any rate the apothecaries must have largely owed the Charter to his influence. He lived in Blackfriars and called himself a “Pharmacopœius,” but we also read of him as an importer of drugs, and it is probable that he traded as a merchant. That he was a man of position is evident from the fact that on one occasion he fetched the Queen, Anne of Denmark, from Norway.

Gideon de Laune was born at Rheims in 1565, and was brought to England as a boy by his father, who was a Protestant pastor. A Nonconformist writer of the same surname who got into trouble in the reigns of Charles II and James II, and was befriended by De Foe, referring to Gideon as a relative, says of him that when he died at the age of 97 he had near as many thousands of pounds as he had years; that he had thirty-seven children by one wife; and that his funeral was attended by sixty grandchildren. It has been ascertained, however, that his children only numbered seventeen, and that he died at the age of 94; so that the later De Laune who wrote in 1681 cannot be implicitly relied upon when figures are concerned. Another thing he tells us of Gideon is that “his famous pill is in great request to this day notwithstanding the swarms of pretenders to pill-making.”

The Grocers’ Company warmly resented the secession of the apothecaries who had been their subordinate partners so long, but their formal petition of complaint called forth a cruel snub from the King. Grocers were but merchants, said James, the business of the apothecaries was a mystery; “Wherefore I think it fitting they should be a corporation of themselves.” The grocers, however, got some of their own back a few years later when James demanded a subsidy from the city for the relief of the Palatinate. The grocers and the apothecaries were assessed at £500 between them. Towards this the apothecaries, pleading poverty, offered £20. The grocers ridiculed this offer, and having paid £300 as their share, left their old associates to find the other £200, which they had to do somehow.

About the same time the new corporation vigorously opposed an application for a Charter made by the distillers of London. The grocers supported the distillers, and the apothecaries failed in their opposition. Sir Theodore Mayerne told them that their monopoly of distillation was only intended to extend to the distillation of medicinal spirits and waters. Mr. Barrett quotes from the old records another curious instance of the contest for monopolies which was characteristic of the period. In 1620, one John Woolf Rumbler having obtained from the King a concession of the sole right of making “mercuric sublimate,” applied to the Court of Apothecaries that he might enjoy the same without their contradiction. This “upon advised consideration,” the Court refused to grant. It is not stated whether the will of the King or that of the apothecaries prevailed in the end.

The story of the jealousies which arose between the physicians and the apothecaries is a long and tedious one; innumerable pamphlets were written on both sides of the controversy, and the dispute figures in English literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Pope very neatly expressed the views of the physicians in the familiar verse in the “Essay on Criticism” in which, comparing the old critics of Greece who “fanned the poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire,” with those of his own day who

illustrated the position by introducing the

This was written in 1709.

The apothecaries strengthened their position as medical practitioners in the public esteem by remaining at their posts during the Great Plague in London in 1665 when most of the physicians fled from the stricken city. Between this date and the end of the seventeenth century the quarrel between the two sections of the profession constantly grew in bitterness. Some of the allegations of extortion made against the apothecaries are almost incredible. In Dr. Goodall’s “Historical Account of the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians against Empiricks and Unlicensed Practisers” (1684), it is reported that George Buller who gave the college some trouble in 1633 had charged 30s. each for 25 pills; £37 10s. for the boxful. Three were given to a Mrs. Style for a sore leg, and she died the same night. A Dr. Tenant prosecuted by the college in James I’s reign “was so impudent and unconscionable in the rating of his medicines that he charged £6 for one pill and the same for an apozeme.”

Dr. R. Pitt, F.R.S., in “Crafts and Frauds of Physic Exposed,” 1703 (a book written expressly to defend the establishment of dispensaries by the Physicians), states that apothecaries had been known to make £150 out of a single case, and that in a recent instance (which had apparently come before the law courts) the apothecary had made £320. In every bill of £100 Dr. Pitt says the charges were £90 more than the shop prices for the medicine.

In Jacob Bell’s “Historical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain” an apothecary’s bill for medicines for one day, supplied to a Mr. Dalby of Ludgate Hill, is quoted from a pamphlet called “The Wisdom of the Nation is Foolishness.” It is as follows:

An Emulsion, 4s. 6d. A Mucilage, 3s. 4d. Gelly of Hartshorn, 4s. Plaster to dress Blister, 1s. An Emollient Glister, 2s. 6d. An ivory pipe, armed 1s. A Cordial Bolus, 2s. 6d. The same again, 2s. 6d. A cordial draught, 2s. 4d. The same again, 2s. 4d. Another bolus, 2s. 6d. Another draught, 2s. 4d. A glass of cordial spirits, 3s. 6d. Blistering plaster to the arm, 5s. The same to the wrists, 5s. Two boluses again, 5s. Two draughts again, 4s. 8d. Another emulsion, 4s. 6d. Another pearl julep, 4s. 6d.

Mr. Dalby’s bill for five days came to £17 2s. 10d., and this was declared to be not an isolated case but illustrative of the practice of apothecaries when attending patients of the higher classes.

Contest between the Physicians and Apothecaries.

In 1687 the College of Physicians adopted a resolution binding all Fellows, Candidates, and Licentiates of the College to give advice gratis to their neighbouring sick poor when desired within the city of London or seven miles round. But in view of the gross extortions of the apothecaries it was asked, What was the use of the physicians’ charity if the cost of compounding the medicines was to be prohibitory? The apothecaries, of course, denied that the examples of their charges which were quoted were at all general, and probably they were not. It was not to the interest of the apothecaries to destroy free prescribing. Indeed a proposal was made to the physicians on behalf of a numerous body of London apothecaries to accept a tariff for medicines dispensed for the poor to be fixed by the physicians themselves.

The relations of the two bodies had become, however, so strained that arrangement was no longer possible. The apothecaries had in fact obtained the upper hand. They treated many cases themselves, and calling in the physician was largely within their discretion. At this time (about 1700) the ordinary fee paid to a physician was 10s. University graduates expected more, but they too, in the majority of cases, were only too glad to take the half sovereign, and it was alleged that they would sometimes pay the apothecary who called them a percentage off this.

Such was the condition of affairs when in 1696 an influential section of the physicians, fifty-three of them, associated themselves in the establishment of Dispensaries, where medicines should be compounded and supplied to the poor at cost price. The fifty-three subscribed ten pounds each, and Dispensaries were opened at the College premises in Warwick Lane, in St. Martin’s Lane, and St. Peter’s Alley, Cornhill.

Needless to say, the war now waxed fiercer than ever. The physicians were divided among themselves, and the anti-dispensarians refused to meet the dispensarians in consultation. The apothecaries naturally recommended the anti-dispensarians to their patients, and consequently it was only the independent ones who could afford to maintain the struggle. Scurrilous pamphlets were written on both sides, and one long poem, Garth’s Dispensary, which was less venomous than most of the literature on the subject, but which as a poem had no merits which could justify the reputation it attained, complicated the struggle from the physicians’ point of view. Johnson says that in addition to its intrinsic merit it “co-operated with passions and prejudices then prevalent.” His sympathies are indicated by his remark that “it was on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority.” One line in the book (the last in the passage quoted below) has attained currency in the English language. Expressing satirically the complaints of the apothecaries, Garth says: