A Treatise on medical jurisprudence : based on lectures delivered at University College, London / by George Vivian Poore.
- George Vivian Poore
- Date:
- 1901
Licence: In copyright
Credit: A Treatise on medical jurisprudence : based on lectures delivered at University College, London / by George Vivian Poore. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![the Apothecaries' Company is an offshoot of the Grocers' Company. The grocers were people largely concerned in importing what we should call colonial goods. With these they imported a good many things which were used in medicine as well as in cookery, and it is not surprising that as medicine advanced, the number of drugs multiplied prodigiously, and that a separate company was organised for their supply. The apothecaries were established in the early days of James I., in the hall close to Blackfriars Bridge, which no doubt many of you know. In its early days the College of Physicians exercised very great powers. They had absolute control over the practice of medicine in London and a certain radius round it, and they often put irregular practitioners in the lock-up. The surgeons might not administer drugs, and there is a case on record of the President of the College of Physicians putting a surgeon in prison for administer- ing a purgative. Those early physicians undertook a great many prosecutions of quacks, and it is interesting to note that these prosecutions often came to nought, because then, as now, the quacks had influential friends among the governing classes. The early physicians set their faces also against unpro- fessional conduct, and if a man's conduct and morals were not what they ought to be, they drummed him out of their society, and held him up to public obloquy. Next we find apothecaries, who were originally druggists pure and simple, prescribing. For a long time a battle raged between the physicians and the apothe- caries, but ultimately the apothecary became a practitioner who supplied medicine, and a very useful person he was and is. Modern Legislation.~T]\& profession remained in a rather chaotic condition until the middle of the present century. It was in 1858 that the first Medical Act was passed. That Medical Act was amended or supplanted](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22652073_0061.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
