LORD KENYON. 369 



practices have been adopted, they are not often 

 afterwards abandoned, because the circumstances 



then contradicted. To support them, it may be mentioned, 

 that according to a publication from the college, dated 1698, 

 the number of apothecaries in London and Westminster, 

 sixty years before, was not 100, but was then above 800 ; 

 and that in 1701, they were said to be nearly IOOO, partners 

 included. At the date of their charter, in 1617, the number 

 was 1 14 5 so that it must have decreased for the first 20 years 

 after their separation. This division, however, seems to 

 have begun more early in some other parts of the kingdom ; 

 for a physician of Salisbury speaks of it in P566 as being 

 lately introduced there. Its origin may, I think, be placed 

 in the greatness of the fees/ which English physicians have 

 always been accustomed to receive. I find many notices of 

 an angel, or ten shillings, being the usual fee to them, from 

 16(55, to the beginning of the present century ; and in 1670, 

 Dr. Goddard, a fellow of the college, and Gresham Professor 

 of Physic, asserted, that the fees then given were according 

 to the ordinary and accustomed rates, time out of mind in 

 England. Many persons, therefore, who wished to receive 

 benefit from medicine, but unable or unwilling to fee phy- 

 sicians so largely, and at the same time too proud to solicit 

 their gratuitous aid, would naturally apply to those, who 

 offered both advice and medicines at a cheap rate. This also 

 seems the chief reason, and not the greater credulity of the 

 people, why empirics formerly abounded here, more than in 

 any other country in Europe. For, since the complete esta- 

 blishment of apothecaries, as medical practitioners, the num- 

 ber of empirics has been considerably lessened ; the descrip- 

 tions of men, who on account of cheapness used to resort to 

 the latter, now applying to the former, for the cure of their 

 complaints. The existence then of a lower order of practi- 

 tioners of medicine appears necessary in this country ; and 



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