PRESENT STATE OF PHARMACY IN ENGLAND. 
3 
increase of the middle class of medical practitioners — the 
apothecaries. In the earlier state of medicine in England, 
as in the United States, the practice of pharmacy was con- 
ducted chiefly under the supervision of physicians, at their 
offices, by young men who were students of medicine, or 
by medical men of inferior capacity, who, from poverty, or 
because they did not aspire higher, spent their days in this 
service. 
About the close of the sixteenth century, the London 
physicians gradually repudiated'pharmacy, by allowing it 
to fall into the hands of their assistants as a separate class, 
and thereafter, the apothecaries, as these were called, 
assumed a more distinct and well defined character. Cer 
tain parts of medical practice, which, as office assistants, 
they had formerly executed, they continued to perform 
tn their independent capacity. In 1606 they were incor- 
porated along with the grocers, and in 1617 they obtained 
a separate charter. They rapidly increased in numbers 
and importance from that time, and the almost helpless 
child of physic, soon attained to a manhood, that excited 
the jealousy of physicians, and called forth their strongest 
exertions of opposition. 
It is natural to suppose that the tendency of such a body 
of practitioners would be to encroach on the real rights of 
physicians ; the pharmacy of that day was too limited a 
sphere for them to revolve in, and although they possessed 
no power or right to receive fees for attendance, yet they 
sought to extend their medical practice, and derived their 
remuneration from the medicines they prescribed. Per- 
haps no more unfortunate concurrence of circumstances 
could have happened them in this arrangement for paying 
the apothecary. The temptation to over-medication was 
direct and positive ; the inducement to overcharge was 
equally great, and for a long series of years, the English 
were over-dosed and over-charged, until the evil attained 
such magnitude as to call up a powerful reaction on the 
