AN APOTHECARY.
From an engraving, 1517.
The physician’s fees were by no means small in the time of the Commonwealth, as may be judged from the following extract from the Memoirs of the Verney Family:—
“Sir Theodore Mayerne is buryed,” writes Dr. Denton, “and died worth £140,000.” Sir Ralph thought £30 too small a fee to pay Dr. Denton for his attendance on his wife during her confinement, but for his pressing poverty he would have sent him £50, equal to about £200 of our present money. Dr. Radcliffe’s regular fees were estimated to bring him in an income of at least £4000 a year; Dr. Mead’s were valued at between £5000 and £6000. Sir George Wheler’s sickness, after a Christmas dinner at Dr. Denton’s, cost him “the best part of £100”. He had caught a chill after dancing, which turned to “a spotted feavour”; Sir George Ent was called in: he had all sorts of “Applications of Blisters and Loudanums”. “My Apothecary’s ... bill came to £28. He was a good man, and told me if I fell into a feavour again, Sage Possit would do me as much good as all the Physitians Prescriptions.”
In Sir Daniel Fleming’s account books we have record of the amount paid to medical practitioners in 1659, as follows:—
| To Doctor Dykes for comeing and laying plasters unto Will | £0 | 10 | 0 |
| For his plaisters and paines contributed towards the cure of Will, the sum of | 5 | 0 | 0 |
A further entry also shows the value of the midwife’s services at the same period. Under date
July 30th, 1659. Given unto Daniel Harrison’s wife for being my wife’s midwife, 5/-.
In the household books of Lord William Howard we learn that on 25th September, 1612, he paid one Mr. Adamson, an apothecary of Keswick, “for xxii dayes and his physick, £xiii. vi,s. viii,d”.
Some of the early preparations used in pharmacy were as elaborate as they were mysterious. The Treacle of Andromachus the elder, a recipe of great antiquity, contained sixty-three ingredients; and the celebrated Mithridate of Damocratis contained forty-eight.