The history of the Society of apothecaries of London / by C.R.B. Barrett, M.A. Illustrated by the author.

  • Charles Raymond Booth Barrett
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The history of the Society of apothecaries of London / by C.R.B. Barrett, M.A. Illustrated by the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Introduction HE earliest mention of an Apothecary in England occurs in a grant reprinted in Rynier’s “ Foedera,” the individual, one Coursus de Gangeland, receiving a pension of 6d. per diem for life in 1345, for attending on King Edward III. while lying sick in Scotland. Gangeland is called therein “an Apothecary of London.” It has been stated that Richard Fitzneale, or Fitz Nigel, Bishop of London, filled the office of Apothecary to Henry II., but the statement is entirely without supporting evidence, and from the knowledge we have of the life of Fitz Nigel, may be dismissed as apocryphal. Of the exact status of the Apothecary in the fifteenth century in England we have no information. Of the foreign Apothecaries, in Germany and elsewhere, all that is known is well put in Beckmann s “ History of Inventions.” Early in the sixteenth century (to be exact, in 1511) Henry VHI. passed an Act of Parliament in which it was stated that through “ the great inconvenience which did ensue by ignorant persons practising physic or surgery, to the grievous hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the King’s liege people,” it became needful to order that no one should practise as surgeon or physician in the City of London, or within seven miles of it, unless he had been first examined, approved, and admitted by the Bishop of London or the Dean of St. Paul’s, who were to be assisted in the examination of candidates by four doctors of physic and of surgery, or other expert persons in that faculty. Seven years later the physicians were for the first time incor-
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