Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
This was written in 1709.
The apothecaries strengthened their position as medical practitioners in the public esteem by remaining at their posts during the Great Plague in London in 1665 when most of the physicians fled from the stricken city. Between this date and the end of the seventeenth century the quarrel between the two sections of the profession constantly grew in bitterness. Some of the allegations of extortion made against the apothecaries are almost incredible. In Dr. Goodall’s “Historical Account of the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians against Empiricks and Unlicensed Practisers” (1684), it is reported that George Buller who gave the college some trouble in 1633 had charged 30s. each for 25 pills; £37 10s. for the boxful. Three were given to a Mrs. Style for a sore leg, and she died the same night. A Dr. Tenant prosecuted by the college in James I’s reign “was so impudent and unconscionable in the rating of his medicines that he charged £6 for one pill and the same for an apozeme.”
Dr. R. Pitt, F.R.S., in “Crafts and Frauds of Physic Exposed,” 1703 (a book written expressly to defend the establishment of dispensaries by the Physicians), states that apothecaries had been known to make £150 out of a single case, and that in a recent instance (which had apparently come before the law courts) the apothecary had made £320. In every bill of £100 Dr. Pitt says the charges were £90 more than the shop prices for the medicine.
In Jacob Bell’s “Historical Sketch of the Progress of Pharmacy in Great Britain” an apothecary’s bill for medicines for one day, supplied to a Mr. Dalby of Ludgate Hill, is quoted from a pamphlet called “The Wisdom of the Nation is Foolishness.” It is as follows:
An Emulsion, 4s. 6d. A Mucilage, 3s. 4d. Gelly of Hartshorn, 4s. Plaster to dress Blister, 1s. An Emollient Glister, 2s. 6d. An ivory pipe, armed 1s. A Cordial Bolus, 2s. 6d. The same again, 2s. 6d. A cordial draught, 2s. 4d. The same again, 2s. 4d. Another bolus, 2s. 6d. Another draught, 2s. 4d. A glass of cordial spirits, 3s. 6d. Blistering plaster to the arm, 5s. The same to the wrists, 5s. Two boluses again, 5s. Two draughts again, 4s. 8d. Another emulsion, 4s. 6d. Another pearl julep, 4s. 6d.
Mr. Dalby’s bill for five days came to £17 2s. 10d., and this was declared to be not an isolated case but illustrative of the practice of apothecaries when attending patients of the higher classes.
Contest between the Physicians and Apothecaries.
In 1687 the College of Physicians adopted a resolution binding all Fellows, Candidates, and Licentiates of the College to give advice gratis to their neighbouring sick poor when desired within the city of London or seven miles round. But in view of the gross extortions of the apothecaries it was asked, What was the use of the physicians’ charity if the cost of compounding the medicines was to be prohibitory? The apothecaries, of course, denied that the examples of their charges which were quoted were at all general, and probably they were not. It was not to the interest of the apothecaries to destroy free prescribing. Indeed a proposal was made to the physicians on behalf of a numerous body of London apothecaries to accept a tariff for medicines dispensed for the poor to be fixed by the physicians themselves.