In April 1606 James I. incorporated the apothecaries as one of the city companies, uniting them with the grocers. On their charter being renewed in 1617 they were formed into a separate corporation, under the title of the “Apothecaries of the City of London.” These apothecaries appear to have prescribed medicines in addition to dispensing them, and to have claimed an ancient right of acting in this double capacity; and it may be mentioned that Henry VIII., after the grant of the charter to the College of Physicians, appointed an apothecary to the Princess Mary, who was delicate and unhealthy, at a salary of 40 marks a year, “pro meliore cura et consideratione sanitatis suoe” During the 17th century, however, there arose a warm contest between the physicians and the apothecaries,—the former accusing the latter of usurping their province, and the latter continuing and justifying the usurpation until the dispute was finally set at rest by a judgment of the House of Lords in 1703, when it was decided that the duty of the apothecary consisted not' oηly in compounding and dispensing, but also in directing and ordering the remedies employed in the treatment of disease. In 1722 an Act was obtained empowering the Apothecaries’ Company to visit the shops of all apothecaries practising in London, and to destroy such drugs' as they found unfit for use. In 1748 great additional powerà were given to the company by an Act authorising them i to appoint a board of ten examiners, without whose license no persons should be allowed to dispense medicines in London, or within a circuit of 7 miles round it. In 1815, however, an Act of Parliament was passed which gave the Apothecaries’ Society a new position, empowering a board, consisting of twelve of their members, to examine and license all apothecaries throughout England and Wales. It also enacted that, from the 1st of August of that year,-no persons except those who were so licensed should have the right to act as apothecaries, and it gave the Society the power of prosecuting those who practised without such license. But the Act expressly exempted from prosecution all persons who were then in actual practice, and it distinctly excluded from its operation all persons pursuing the calling of chemists and druggists. It was also provided that the Act should in no way interfere with the rights or privileges of the English Universities, or of the English College of Surgeons or the College of Physicians; and indeed a clause imposed severe penalties on any apothecaries who should refuse to compound and dispense medicines on the order of a physician, legally qualified to act as such. It is therefore clear'that the Act contemplated the creation of a class of practitioners who, while having the right to practise medicine, should assist and co-operate with the physicians and surgeons.

Before this Act came into operation the education of the medical practitioners of England and Wales was entirely optional on their own part, and although many of them possessed degrees or licences from the universities or colleges, the greater number possessed no such qualification, and many of them were wholly illiterate and uneducated. The Court of Examiners of the Apothecaries’ Society being empowered to enforce the acquisition of a sufficient medical education upon its future licentiates, specified from time to time the courses of lectures or terms of hospital practice to be attended by medical students before their examination, and, in the progress of years, regular schools of medicine were organised throughout England.

As it was found that, notwithstanding the stringent regulations as to medical acquirements, the candidates were in many instances deficient in preliminary education, the Court of Examiners instituted, about the year 1850, a preliminary examination in Arts as a necessary and indispensable prerequisite to the medical curriculum, and this provision has been so expanded that, at the present day, all medical students in the United Kingdom are compelled to pass a preliminary examination in Arts, unless they hold a university degree. An Act of Parliament, passed in 1858, and known as the Medical Act, made very little alteration in the powers exercised by the Apothecaries’ Society, and indeed it confirmed and in some degree amplified them, for whereas by the Act of 1815, the licentiates of the Society were authorised to practise as such only in England and Wales, the new measure gave them the same right in Scotland and Ireland.

A still more recent Act, passed in 1874, relates exclusively to the Apothecaries’ Society, and is termed the Apothecaries’ Act Amendment Act. By this measure some provisions of the Act of 1815, which had become obsolete or unsuited to the present times, were repealed, and powers were given to the Society to unite or co-operate with other medical licensing bodies in granting licences to practise. The Act of 1815 had made it compulsory on all candidates for a licence to have served an apprenticeship of five years to an apothecary, and although by the interpretation of the Court of Examiners of the Society this term really included the whole period of medical study, yet the regulation was felt as a grievance by many members of the medical profession. It is accordingly repealed, and no apprenticeship is now necessary. The restriction of the choice of examiners to the members of the Society is also repealed, and the Society has moreover the power (which it did not before possess) to strike off from the list of its licentiates the names of disreputable persons. As a question was raised, under the Act of 1815, whether women were admissible as candidates for the medical licence (owing to the ambiguous wording of the measure), and as the society, acting under legal advice, had admitted a woman to the licence, the Act of 1874 refers to the point, but leaves it still undecided, merely specifying that the new Act does not deprive the Society of any right or obligation they may have to adffiit women to examination, and to enter their names on the list of licentiates if they acquit themselves satisfactorily.