THE CHELSEA ‘‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN * 
For all the aid they received the apothecaries made ample returns,. 
and the claims the outside public made upon them are much in: 
evidence when we arrive at the nineteenth century. 
It was about 1815 that the Horticultural Society of London 
begged the use of a part of the garden in order to promote the 
cultivation of foreign vegetables used for food and condiments ; 
and a plot near the river was assigned to them. 
In 1829 an effort was made to render the garden more useful 
to the medical profession at large than it had hitherto been; 
it was thrown open for study more often, and not only to the 
apprentices of the apothecaries, but also to all professors and. 
students in medicine, chemistry, botany, and materia medica.. 
The Demonstrator’s salary was raised, so that lectures and de- 
monstrations might be more frequently given, and prizes and 
medals were offered for success in the examinations. The happy 
result was that from every medical school in London, students 
flocked, either on foot or in boats, to the Chelsea Garden: and a 
course of study there became part of the recognized medical curri- 
culum, so that in 1862 there were five hundred applications for 
admission. 
In the course of instruction, demonstrations and, up to 1833, 
herbalizings also, occupied a very large part. The Society’s 
demonstrations took place not less than once in every summer 
month ; they began at nine in the morning; the medical plants 
were arranged in systematic order in a certain part of the garden, 
and like a clinical lecturer in a hospital, the Demonstrator passed 
from bed to bed—followed and surrounded by his pupils, to whom 
he pointed out the plants, explaining their uses in medicine, 
their botanical character, and their place in the Linnaeian 
classification. 
But all these advantages were offered to the male sex only; 
it was not until 1877 that the Apothecaries’ Society gave even a 
modicum of encouragement to women. The Court of Assistants 
then resolved to offer prizes for proficiency in botany to the female 
sex; and they were to be competed for in the same manner as 
those given to men. But Field and Simple, in recording this 
munificence, take care to explain that by this resolution “ it was 
not at all intended to promote the assumption by ladies of medical 
titles, or to sanction the adoption of the medical profession by 
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