PROGRESS OF PHARMACY IN GREAT BRITAIN. 269 
cers, who also sold drugs, but in 1617, they obtained a se- 
parate charter, and it was made unlawful for surgeons to 
sell medicine, or grocers to keep apothecary's shops. They 
were also empowered to search shops and examine drugs. 
Soon after unhing their interests in a corporate capacity, 
they established [1623] a dispensary for making some of 
the more important preparations, which was placed under 
the superintendance of a committee. 
The first British Pharmacopoeia was published by the 
London College of Physicians, in the year 1618, and was 
the first attempt at reducing the confused and incongruous 
mass of recipes and materials to a regular standard, and it 
succeeded but imperfectly. Its subsequent editions were 
issued in 1621, 1632, 1639, 1650, 1677, 1721, 1746, 17S8, 
1809, 1824, and 1836. Notwithstanding the several revi- 
sions of this work from 1621 to 1650, inclusive, Culpeper, 
in a translation of the edition of 1650, thus speaks of some 
ofthe items of the list of materia medica. The words in 
parentheses are his remarks : " The fat, grease, or suet of 
a duck, goose, eel, bore, heron, thymallos, (if you know 
where to get ii,) dog, capon, beaver, wild cat,storck, hedge 
hog, hen, man, lyon, hare, kite or jack, (if they have any 
fat I am persuaded it is worth twelve pence a grain,) wolf, 
mouse of the mountains, (if you can catch them,) joar^/a/, 
hog, serpent, badger, bear, /ox, vullur, (if you can catch 
them) album, grsecum, east and west benzoar, stone taken 
from a man'' s bladder, viper^s flesh, the brains of hares and 
sparrows, the rennet of a lamb, kid, hare, and a calf, and 
a horse, too, (quoth the colledg.] [They should have put 
the rennet of an ass to make medicine for their addle brains.] 
The excrement of a goose, of a dog, of a goat, of pigeons, 
of a stone horse, of swallows, of men, of women, of mice, 
of peacocks, <^c." 
Culpeper, although styling himself Nich. Culpeper, 
Gent., Student in Physick and Astrology and possessed 
of many superstitious notions, derived from the ancients or 
25 
