X PREFACE. 



omitted, and those that were retained were directed to be made 

 upon a smaller scale than in the other. 



The London College of Physicians first published, or rather 

 distributed amongst the apothecaries, a Pharmacopoeia of their 

 own in May 1618, selected from the two latter of these works, 

 with a few additions from the modern authors then in repute; 

 but this work was found so full of errors, that it was obliged to 

 be called in immediately, the whole impression cancelled, and a 

 new edition published in December following. This Pharma- 

 copoeia was published, like all the succeeding ones, in Latin ; 

 being intended, in the language of the preface, for the filii Apol- 

 linis only. Indeed, the college appear to have been very angry 

 with Culpeper for translating it and the works of the principal 

 authors on medicine into the vulgar tongue, refusing him, as it 

 should seem, although educated at Cambridge, a licence to prac- 

 tise, and thus converting him into a bitter enemy. Unfortunately, 

 the great popularity of his writings, still considered as classical 

 amongst the common people, gave a currency to his opinions, and 

 exposed the college to much obloquy. 



The difficulties placed upon an admission into the college, ori- 

 ginally with a view to confine the members to a small number, 

 like the contemporaneous monopoly of the proctors of the civil 

 and canon law, naturally led those who found themselves excluded 

 to endeavour to evade its powers, at first by merely advising 

 their patients to buy some medicine which had been prescribed 

 by' a member of the college for a similar complaint: a prac- 

 tice which some physicians, as Daffy, Goddard, &c., in Charles 

 the Second''s reign, endeavoured to counteract, by ordering a 

 nostrum, which could only be had at their own house, or 

 that of a confidential apothecary, in most of their prescriptions, 

 communicating, however, the preparation to their fellow-mem- 

 bers of the college under the seal of secrecy for their life ; while 

 others, as Merrett, Mortimer, &c., furnished their patients with 

 the necessary medicines, without any other charge than their 

 usual fee. 



Afterwards the unlicensed practitioners, or apothecaries, did 

 not think it necessary to confine themselves to recommending 

 the prescriptions of physicians, but acted upon their own judg- 

 ments, especially when the House of Lords decided the case of 



