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 fail as fools.
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 fail as fools.
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 fail as fools.
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 fail as fools.
Notwithstanding the sympathy of Dr. Johnson, Pope, and many other famous contemporaries, the quarrel ended in the comparative triumph of the apothecaries.
The physicians, though reluctant to enforce what they believed to be their statutory powers, were goaded into law, and at last brought an action against a London apothecary named William Rose, who they alleged had infringed the Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII. Rose had attended a butcher in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields named Seale, and had administered “proper medicines” to him. He had no licence from the Faculty, and in his treatment of Seale had not acted under the direction of any physician. He had neither taken nor demanded any fee for his advice.
Those were the facts found by the jury who first heard the case. The College claimed a penalty of fivepounds per month for the period during which Rose had thus practised. The Charter granted to the physicians in the tenth year of Henry VIII, and confirmed by an Act of Parliament passed in the fourteenth and fifteenth year of that reign, contained a clause forbidding any person not admitted by the College to practise the faculty of medicine in London or within seven miles thereof under a penalty of one hundred solidi for every month during which he should thus infringe the law.
The jury having found the facts already quoted, referred to the Court of Queen’s Bench the legal question whether the acts performed constituted the practice of medicine within the meaning of the Act. The case was argued three times in the Court of Queen’s Bench—(so it is stated in the report of the proceedings in the House of Lords),—and ultimately the judges decided unanimously in favour of the contention of the College. Thereupon, on behalf of Rose a writ of error was moved for in the House of Lords demanding a reversal of the judgment. The counsel who argued the appeal were S. Dodd for Rose, and F. Brown for the College. The case was heard on the 15th of March, 1703.
In support of the appeal it was argued that if the judgment were allowed to stand it would ruin not only Rose but all other apothecaries. That the Act was a very old one, and that the constant usage and practice ought to be taken into account. That if this judgment were right the apothecary would not dare to sell a few lozenges or a little electuary to any person asking for a remedy for a cold, or in other common cases where a medicine had a known and certain effect. That to give a monopoly in the treatment of disease to physicians would have most mischievous consequences; both rich and poor would be seriously taxed, and in the case ofsudden accidents or illnesses in the night when apothecaries were so frequently sent for, the danger of not permitting them to supply the necessary medicine might often be most serious.
To these contentions the counsel for the College replied that by several orders physicians had bound themselves to attend the poor free, either at their own offices, or, if sent for, at the patient’s house. That out of consideration for the poor they had gone further by establishing Dispensaries where the medicines they prescribed could be obtained at not more than one-third of the price which the apothecaries had been in the habit of charging. That in sudden emergencies an apothecary or anyone else was justified in doing his best to relieve his neighbours, but that in London, at least, a skilled physician was as available as an apothecary, and that this emergency argument ought not to be used to permit apothecaries to undertake all sorts of serious diseases at their leisure. That there was nothing to prevent apothecaries selling whatever medicines they were asked for, but that to permit them to treat cases however slight involved both danger and expense, because a mistake made at the beginning of a distemper might lead to a long illness, and in any case the apothecary would charge for much more medicine than was necessary.
After hearing the arguments “it was ordered and adjudged that the judgment given in the Court of Queen’s Bench be reversed.”
From this period the apothecaries became recognised medical practitioners, the Society granted medical diplomas, and a hundred years later (1815) they obtained an Act which gave them powers against other persons similar to those which the physicians thought they possessed against them. Persons not qualified by them were forbidden to “act or practise as apothecaries” under a penalty of £20; and the courts have held that to practise as an apothecary is to judge of internal disease by symptoms, and to supply medicine to cure that disease. The chemists and druggists who had largely succeeded to the old business of the apothecaries opposed this provision, and the apothecaries, to buy off their opposition, offered to insert a clause in their Act which would allow all persons who should at that time or thereafter carry on that business to do so “as fully and amply to all intents and purposes as they might have done in case this Act had not been made.” The chemists were not content with this provision, and drafted another which defined their business as consisting in the “buying, preparing, compounding, dispensing and vending drugs, and medicinal compounds, wholesale and retail.” The apothecaries accepted this alteration, and subsequently obtained penalties from chemists who had prescribed remedies for customers. Such prescribing would have been legal if the druggists had accepted the provision proposed by the apothecaries; but they had limited themselves out of it. In the actions which the Society of Apothecaries have brought against chemists the apothecaries have often reproduced with scrupulous fidelity the arguments used against themselves by the physicians in Rose’s case.
The Dispensaries established by the physicians were not long maintained, but apparently they provided the material of the modern chemist and druggist. “We have reason to believe,” writes Jacob Bell in hisHistorical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain, “that the Assistants employed and instructed by the Physicians at these institutions became dispensing chemists on their own account; and that some of the apothecaries who found their craft in danger followed the example, from which source we may date the origin of the chemists and druggists.”
In the course of the eighteenth century chemists and druggists had to a large extent replaced apothecaries as keepers of shops where medicines were sold and dispensed, and even when the businesses were owned by apothecaries, they usually styled themselves chemists and druggists. In the year 1841 an attempt was made to get a Bill through Parliament which would have made it penal to recommend any medicine for the sake of gain. The Bill was introduced by a Mr. Hawes, and the chemists and druggists of London opposed it with such vigour that it was ultimately withdrawn. In order to be prepared against future attacks the victorious chemists and druggists then formed the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, which was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1842. An Act protecting the title of pharmaceutical chemist was passed in 1852, and in 1868 another Act, requiring all future chemists and druggists to pass examinations and be registered, and restricting to them the sale of poisons, became law.