ADecemberi™-}       Society  of  Pharmacy  of  Paris.  571 
on  from  time  to  time,  until  the  English  apothecary  gradually  devel- 
oped into  what  the  physician  had  been,  a  self-dispensing  practitioner 
of  medicine.  This  English  apothecary  in  turn  had  considerable  in- 
fluence on  the  early  development  of  medical  practice  in  the  United 
States.  In  Paris,  on  the  other  hand,  the  guild  of  the  grocers  and 
apothecaries  existed  until  1777.  In  that  year,  by  a  royal  decree, 
the  apothecaries  were  finally  and  completely  separated  from  their 
unwelcome  congeners,  the  grocers,  and  were  not  alone  awarded 
their  Physic  Garden  but  were  also  given  certain  duties  and  privi- 
leges. 
They  were  empowered  to  give  public  instruction  in  chemistry, 
botany  and  materia  medica,  to  examine  candidates,  grant  diplomas 
and  also  entertain  a  certain  supervision  over  trade  interests. 
The  Corporation  of  the  Apothecaries,  or  as  it  was  better  known,  the 
College  of  Pharmacy,  may  therefore  be  said  to  have  had  a  threefold 
aspect ;  it  was,  at  the  same  time,  a  teaching  body,  a  scientific  society, 
and  a  trade  guild. 
At  an  earlier  date,  it  appears,  there  had  been  considerable  friction 
between  the  apothecaries  and  the  faculty  of  medicine,  the  latter 
denying  the  apothecaries  the  right  to  teach  their  own  profession  in 
public  lectures  or  by  demonstrations  in  their  Physic  Garden. 
This  periodic  dispute  was  also  finally  and  definitely  settled  by 
the  decree  of  1777,  while  a  Royal  ordinance  dated  February  10, 
1780,  placed  the  College  of  Pharmacy  under  Royal  patronage  and 
empowered  the  corporation  to  instruct  and  examine  in  the  arts  and 
mysteries  of  the  apothecary  and  to  grant  to  the  successful  appli- 
cants the  degree  of  Master  of  Pharmacy. 
In  the  years  immediately  succeeding  its  inauguration,  the  College 
of  Pharmacy  was  enabled  to  materially  enlarge  on  its  vested  privi- 
leges, so  that  the  opening  year  of  the  French  Revolution  found  the 
institution  firmly  established  and  generally  recognized  as  a  valuable 
and  useful  part  of  the  body  politic. 
With  other  similar  corporations  the  College  of  Pharmacy  was 
abolished  by  the  decree  of  March  2,  1791,  the  same  decree  leaving 
all  persons  free  to  exercise  any  trade,  business  or  profession  they 
chose,  providing  they  obtained  the  necessary  license. 
The  abuse  of  this  privilege,  in  connection  with  the  business  of  the 
apothecary,  was  so  great  that  only  six  weeks  later,  on  April  14th 
of  the  same  year,  the  National  Assembly  made  a  temporary  and 
