272 PROGRESS OF PHARMACY IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
a great height ; on one side it was alleged that the improve- 
ment that had taken place among the apothecaries was a 
great benefit to the public, and that the physicians, by en- 
deavouring to restrain them, were undoing what the labour 
of their predecessors had accomplished. While the other 
party animadverted on the extortionate charges of the apo- 
thecaries, and the loss which the public sustained by being 
deprived of the advantage of the best advice in many cases 
for which it was impossible to pay both the physician and 
the apothecary." 
It appears that the evil complained of induced a number 
of physicians to establish dispensaries, at which medicines 
were supplied on reasonable terms by assistants, who dis- 
pensed them under their directions. An instrument of writ- 
ing to this effect was published by the President, Censors, 
&c., of the College of Physicians, subscribed to by fifty- 
three of their number, in which each subscriber obligated 
himself to put ten pound sterling in a common fund, to be 
devoted to the support of dispensaries, where medicines 
could be had by the poor at low rates, and to which the 
physicians interested could send their prescriptions. Three 
of these establishments were put into operation in February, 
1697, and^ soon grew sufficiently formidable to call forth 
the opposition of the apothecaries, to whom they gave great 
ofience. Mr. Piell quotes ihe following effusion of one 
Garth, in his " Dispensary." 
Our manufactures now the Doctors sell, 
And their intrinsic value meanly tell ; 
Nay, they discover, too, (their spite is such,) 
That health, than crowns more valued, costs not much ; 
Whilst we must shape our conduct by these rules. 
To cheat as tradesmen or to starve as fools." 
The contest between the rival interests continued to rage, 
pamphlets were written, filled with crimination and abuse, 
each party endeavouring to prove the motives of the other to 
be bad. As a natural consequence, the physicians, whose aim 
