A visiting physician's fee was a guinea, but a consulting one's less. 'The Worshipful Graduate in the noble Art of Man slaughter, receiv'd us with a Civility that was peculiar to him at the sight of four Half Crowns.' A suit of black (velvet if possible), a full-bottomed wig, a muff, and a gold- or silver-headed cane formed the outward adornment of the physician.

The surgeons, not being incorporated till 1800, had no special meeting-place; but the apothecaries had their Hall in Water Lane, Blackfriars, which had been built in 1670, and is thus described by Garth:—

Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable Streams,
To wash his sooty Naiads in the Thames;
There stands a Structure on a Rising Hill,
Where Tyro's take their Freedom out to kill.

—The Dispensary, Canto 3, ed. 1699.

Professional etiquette was, as a rule, strictly adhered to, and these divisions did not interfere with each other, although Brown[532] intimates that it was done occasionally: 'Gallypot.... "For tho' I am an Old Apothecary, I am but a Young Doctor. For I visit in either Capacity, either as an Old Apothecary, which is as good as a Young Doctor, or as a Young Doctor, and that's as good as t'other again." Trueman. "But I thought you had left off Shop, and stuck only to your Doctorship?" Gallypot. "So I do openly, but privately I keep a Shop, and side in all things with the Apothecaries against the Doctors."'

This allusion refers to a curious dissension which had arisen in the profession. The physicians at the latter end of the seventeenth century were undoubtedly an ignorant and unscientific race; and the apothecaries, finding that if they did not know as much, they could soon do so, began to prescribe on their own responsibility, as Pope[533] says:—

So modern 'pothecaries taught the art
By Doctor's bills, to play the Doctor's part;
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and calls their Masters fools.

The physicians naturally resented this, and making a pretext that the apothecary's charges were so enormous as to render their prescriptions useless to the poor, they eventually set up a Dispensary of their own at the College, where they sold medicines to the poor at cost price. And this accusation was warranted, if we can believe Brown. 'Pray how do ye at your end of the Town prize a Dose of common Purging Pills?' 'Why, Brother, about Eighteenpence, sometimes Two Shillings, with an Haustus after them of Three and Sixpence.' 'And can you live so? I believe all the things cost you at least a Shilling out of Pocket.' 'No, God forbid! How could I live then? Indeed they cost me about Sixpence, and I take but Five Shillings and Sixpence, sometimes less, and I think that's honest Gains.'

This Dispensary was the cause of great disturbance, and split the profession into Dispensarians and anti-Dispensarians, and a naturally acrimonious feeling sprang up, which was only allayed by the obnoxious Dispensary being given up, when things fell back into their old groove.

The Pharmacopœias then in use were 'Lasher's,' 'Bate's Dispensary,' 'Hartman's Family Physitian,' and 'Salmon's Collectanea Medica'[534]; and very curious indeed were some of the medicines prescribed, as 'Live Hog Lice,' 'Burnt Cork quenched in Aqua Vitæ,' 'Red Coral,' 'New Gathered Earth Worms,' 'Live Toads,' 'Black tips of Crabs Claws,' 'Man's Skull,' 'Elk's hoofs,' 'Leaves of Gold,' 'Man's bones calcined,' 'Inward skin of a Capon's Gizzard,' 'Goose dung, gather'd in the Spring time, dry'd in the Sun,' 'Stone of a Carp's head,' 'Unicorn's horn,' 'Boar's tooth,' 'Jaw of a Pike,' 'Wind pipes of Sheep cleansed and dryed in an Oven, Wind pipes of Capons in like manner prepared,' 'Sea Horse tooth rasped,' 'Frog's livers,' 'White dung of a Peacock dryed,' 'Toads and Vipers flesh,' 'Cuttle fish bone,' and many others even more repulsive than these.