In the year 1560 there was no apothecary’s shop at Eisenach, and even in the time of duke John Ernest, who died in 1638, there was none for the court; but the place of apothecary was supplied by one of the yeomen of the jewellery.
In the year 1598, count John von Oldenburg caused an apothecary’s shop to be established at Oldenburg for the common good of the country[1030].
In Hanover the first apothecary’s shop was established by the council in 1565, near the council-house[1031]. The consort of duke Philip II. of Grubenhagen, a princess of Brunswick, who was married in 1560, supported at her court an apothecary’s shop and a still-house, for the benefit of her servants and the poor[1032]. Duke Julius, who came to the government of Brunswick in 1568, caused apothecaries’ shops to be established in his territories; and his consort, a daughter of the elector of Brandenburg, kept, for the use of the poor, an expensive apothecary’s shop in her palace; and the citizens of the new Heinrichstadt, near Wolfenbuttel, were allowed when afflicted by any epidemic disease, the dysentery, quinsy, scurvy, or stone, to be supplied with medicines from it free of all expense[1033].
The apothecary’s shop at the court of Dresden was founded by the electress Ann, a Danish princess, in the year 1581. In 1609 it was renewed by Hedwig, widow of the elector Christian I.; and in 1718 it received considerable improvement.
Gustavus Erickson, king of Sweden, was the first person in that country who attempted to establish an apothecary’s shop. On the 20th of March, 1547, he requested Dr. John Audelius of Lubeck, to send him an experienced physician and a good apothecary. On the 5th of May, 1550, his body-physician, Henry von Diest, received orders to bring a skilful apothecary into the kingdom. When the king died in 1560, he had no other physicians with him than his barber master Jacob, an apothecary master Lucas, and his confessor Magister Johannes, who, according to the popish mode, practised physic, and prescribed for his majesty. Master Lucas, as appears, was the first apothecary at Stockholm. On the 21st of March, 1575, one Anthony Busenius was appointed by king John apothecary to the court[1034]; and in 1623, Philip Magnus Schmidt, a native of Langensalz in Thuringen, was chosen to fill that office. In the year 1675 there were five apothecaries’ shops in Stockholm; since 1694 the number has been nine. The first apothecary’s shop at Upsal was established in 1648 by Simon Wolimhaus, who came from Konigsee in Thuringen, and from whom the present family of count Gyllenborg are descended. The first apothecary’s shop at Gottenburg was established about the same time. Towards the end of the sixteenth century physicians and apothecaries were invited into Russia by the czar Boris Godunow[1035].
I shall here take occasion to remark the following circumstance: at the Byzantine court the keeper of the wardrobe, as the yeoman of the jewellery at Eisenach in the sixteenth century, had the care of the portable apothecary’s shop when the emperor took the field. It was called pandectæ, and contained theriac and antidotes, with all kinds of oils, plasters, salves, and herbs proper for curing men and cattle[1036].
[In England, in 1543, an act was passed for the toleration and protection of the numerous irregular practitioners, who were neither surgeons nor physicians. It was entitled “An Act that persons being no common surgeons may minister outward medicines;” the persons thus tolerated comprehending those who kept shops for the sale of drugs, to whom the name of apothecaries was then exclusively applied. On the 9th of April, 1606, king James I. incorporated the apothecaries of London and united them with the grocers; they remained so until 1617, when they received a new charter, forming them into a separate company under the designation of the master, wardens, and society of the art and mysteries of apothecaries of the city of London. It appears that the apothecaries of London did not begin generally to prescribe as well as to dispense medicines until a few years before the close of the seventeenth century.]
I must add a few observations also respecting the earliest Dispensatorium. It is almost generally admitted that the first was drawn up by Valerius Cordus, or at least that his was the first sanctioned by the approbation of public magistrates. Haller has remarked one older; but it is now known only from the title mentioned by Maittaire[1037]. Cordus however appears to have first used the word dispensatorium for a collection of receipts, containing directions how to prepare the medicines most in use. This book it is well known has been often printed with the additions of other physicians; but, in my opinion, Conring[1038] is in a mistake when he says that it was improved and enlarged by Matthiolus. I have in no edition found any additions of Matthiolus; and the error seems to have arisen from the christian name of Matthias Lobelius, which stands in the title of some editions, because his annotations are added to them. It is very singular that Kestner[1039] also has fallen into this mistake, who, however, says that the name of Matthiolus is only in the title, for in the book itself he found no appearance of his having had any concern with it.
FOOTNOTES
[1010] Dr. Mohsen has already published a considerable part of what belongs to this subject in his Geschichte der Wissenschaften in der Mark Brandenburg, besonders der Arzneywissenschaft. Berlin, 1781, 4to, p. 372. Some information also respecting the history of apothecaries may be found in Thomassii Dissert. de Jure circa Pharmacopolia Civitatum, in his Dissertationes Academicæ, Halle, 1774, 4 vols. quarto.