PROGRESS OP PHARMACY IN GREAT BRITAIN. 267 
four Doctors of Physic, or for Surgery, other expert per- 
sons in that faculty ; and for the first examination such as 
they shall think convenient, and afterward alway four of 
them that have been so approved." # » * 
The same discretionary power was delegated by the bill 
to the Bishops of other dioceses away from London. 
This act invested the faculty of medicine in a body of 
persons who practiced medicine, surgery, and pharmacy. 
The physician's assistants were called apothecaries, who 
gradually assumed practice on their own account, and gave 
rise, ultimately, to the extensive body now known in Eng- 
land as apothecaries or general practitioners. 
A College of Physicians was established in 1518, at the 
suggestion of Thomas Linacre, the physician of Hemy 
VIII. Its powers were increased in 1540, the physicians 
were excused from attendance on juries and parochial oflices, 
and were empowered to enter the apothecaries shops of 
London, " to search, view, and see the apothecary's wares, 
drugs and stuffs," and to destroy such as they found cor- 
rupt or unfit for use. At the same period the barbers and 
surgeons had their rights invested in one company, with the 
proviso that the surgeons should not practise shaving, nor 
the barbers any surgical operations except drawing teeth. 
There having been an abuse of privileges on the part of 
the surgeons, an other Act was passed two years after, 
which, after enumerating the chief points of the previous 
law, says; " Sithence the making of which said act, the 
Company and Fellowship of Surgeons of London, minding 
onely their owne lucres, and nothing the profit or ease of 
the diseased or patient, have sued, troubled and vexed 
divers honest persons, as well men as women, whom God 
hath endued with the knowledge of the nature, kind, and 
operation of certain herbs, roots and waters, and the using 
and ministering of them to such as have been pained with 
customable diseases, as women's breasts being sore, a pin 
