BRISTOL PHARMACEUTICAL ASSOCIATION. 
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distanced us. With your permission we will leave them to their studies, and turn our 
attention for a while to what I trust may prove more attractive to you all, namely, 
the past, present, and future of pharmacy amongst ourselves. 
I have been unable to find any traditional account even of the practice of medicine 
by the Celts in Britain. 
Possibly some of the Welsh legends may throw some dim light upon the matter, 
the name Cymri belonging originally to the Celtic tribes, who are supposed to have 
migrated from Jutland or Denmark. < , 
No doubt the Druids, presiding over the religion of the ancient Britons, interfered 
in the treatment of disease ; and you will remember that when our forefathers were 
attacked with what appeared to be mortal maladies, human sacrifices were offered to 
appease the supposed anger of the gods, and at these sacrifices the Druids, of course, 
d resided 
That their knowledge of the principles of some sciences was really much greater 
than their barbaric practices would indicate, is evident from the stony memorials which 
to this day puzzle and astound engineers and antiquarians. 
Of the art of medicine in the dark ages very little is known; the 3ame shadow 
rests upon it which covered the whole land. 
And of the alchemists it is not my intention to say much, as they are the fathers 
rather of chemistry than of pharmacy; but it is impossible not to feel and to acknow¬ 
ledge the debt we owe to men who, in the pursuit of a wild vision, struck upon rich 
mines of knowledge, and whose researches, mixed up although they were with sorcery, 
superstition, and fraud, lit that lamp which has burnt brighter and brighter through 
the long ages, until by its wondrous fight all nature is illumined, and the very sun 
itself submits to our gaze and reveals its hidden substance. 
It would hardly be right, however, to pass over altogether the name of Roger 
Bacon, the one true philosopher of alchemy. Born at Ilchester, in Somerset, early in 
the thirteenth century, we seem to look upon him as a friend and neighbour. 
He was, as you are aware, a Franciscan monk, and after visiting France, became 
well known in England, and especially at Oxford, then the chief seat of learning in 
the kingdom. , , 
His attempts to refute and expose the ignorance and folly of his age, and to shame 
the outrageous immorality of the monastic order, cost him very dear, and after long 
imprisonment, he narrowly escaped being burnt as a magician. 
During the feudal ages, the art alike of the physician and apothecary was almost 
entirely in the hands of women; the few men engaged in it being either clerks or 
priests. In those superstitious times the “little knowledge which is a dangerous 
tiling,” was made into a great power by its possessors ; and although all the treatment 
of the sick partook more of quackery than science, those who undertook it exercised 
an influence over the bodies and souls of men well-nigh irresistible. 
Nor do we wonder to find women engaging in its pursuit with characteristic eager¬ 
ness. A spiteful writer has attributed this to their love of intrigue, which such a 
calling would aid and foster. . . _ , , 
Possibly a desire for the possession of some magic influence, by which their haughty 
lords and masters might be effectually humbled, had some share in their calculations, 
but we prefer to accept the fact as a proof that women have always been the true 
ministering angels, and to think of the earliest predecessors of Florence Nightingale 
and her sisters, as we think of them, with reverence and with admiration.. 
The first apothecary of whom any mention is made in our own land, is a certain 
“ Coursus de Gangeland,” who, in 1345, was fortunate enough to be called into attend 
Edward III. when in Scotland ; the king having probably found the mountain air, or 
the mountain dew, too strong for him. . ^ . 
A pension of sixpence per day for fife was settled upon the lucky Coursus, and, in 
addition, his name comes down to us as the oldest styled apothecary. 
It is somewhat curious that this same year, 1345, is named as being the year in 
which the first apothecary’s shop was opened in London. Whether our friend Coursus 
left Scotland never to go “ bock again,” and set himself forth in the Metropolis as 
apothecary—on the establishment—to “ His Majesty King Edward the Third I do 
not know. There does not appear to have been any control, however, over De Gauge- 
