Linacre's influence on English medicine / by Sir George Newman.

  • George Newman
Date:
1928
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Linacre's influence on English medicine / by Sir George Newman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    culture ; it was the first systematic plan of education prescribed in England for a faculty of medicine. Out of it great things were to come. It knew the mighty secret. “The congregated college have concluded That labouring art can never ransom Nature From her inaidable Estate.”* Within a century it had built for itself a compre¬ hensive institution for scientific advancement com¬ prising anatomical and special lectureships, a physic garden, a museum, a library, and the publication of the London Pharmacopoeia for the standardisation of drugs. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BRITISH PHARMACOPOEIA. The letters patent granted by Henry VIII. which constituted the College of Physicians were con¬ firmed by an Act of Parliament in 1523, which par- ticularly provided for the supervision and scrutiny of every kind of medicine prescribed by physicians practising within the City of London and a radius of seven miles thereof. The means proposed for such supervision was that certain persons appointed by the College should be authorised to enter the premises of all apothecaries and destroy any defec¬ tive drugs found there. They were to be assisted by the Warden of the Mystery of Poticaries within the City, and a few years later the College invoked the aid of the Warden of the Grocers. A hundred years after, in 1618, some of these powers were also conferred separately on the apothecaries, and this was confirmed by the Apothecaries Act of 1815. * All’s Well that Ends Well, II., 1.