Apothecary

“ Seventhly, I shall need to say little of such distilled waters, as discover themselves neither to smell, nor tast, but shall only recite a known Story of an Apothecary, who chid his man for sending away a Customer that came for Plantan water, telling him there was enough at the Pump.
Eighthly, As for Ointments, and Plasters, they are sold by some at so low a price, viz. 3d. ”

“ Their furnaces stand in the Apothecaries’ shops to which they seldom or never come. A paper scroll in which their usual Recipe is written serves their purpose to the full, which Bill being by some Apothecary’s boy or servant received, he with great noise thumps out of his mortar every medicine, and all the health of the sick. ”

“ An apothecary brought a youth to the hospital with a carbuncle on his face, and his throat and neck swollen beyond belief. The master said the youth must go home to die. “Is there then no remedy?” asked the apothecary. The physician replied, “I believe most truly that if thou wert to give tyriacum in a large dose, there would be a chance that he might live.” ”

“ Eighthly, Another trick is when the Patient is cured, and the Physician therefore hath given over his Visits, then comes the Apothecary and insinuates by his words and passions, either some danger of relapse, or some other present distemper, and repairs to the Physician for a Bill to cure the imaginary disease. ”

“ The apothecary, instead of sending him the prescription for correction, as he ought to have done, put it up and sent it with the fearful monition that the dose would prove fatal—and so it did—to the prescriber himself, who took the dose his patient dared not touch. He died in five minutes, a victim to a printer’s error, to his own self confidence, to want of etiquette in the apothecary, and last, not least, to an ill-contrived system of weights.
This brings us to the practical question, What is to be done? All agree that there ought to be a reform. ”

“ PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. To obtain a clear conception of the great advance that has been made in medicine and pharmacy, it is necessary to look back through the vista of centuries at the Elizabethan apothecary. In doing so, we should note how the influence of superstition and charlatanry, with which the art of healing was surrounded and intermixed, has been gradually dispersed under the searching light of science. One can picture the apothecary’s shop in the days of “good Queen Bess”. ”

“ When called to a patient upon the recommendation of the family apothecary, you are to consider him one of your best friends, and pay court to him accordingly; on the contrary, if you are engaged upon the spontaneous opinion of the patient, or his relatives, you have every reason to conclude the abilities of the apothecary are held in very slender estimation, and you may safely venture to display as much of your own consequence and superiority, as circumstances will admit. ”

“ I, A. B. do solemnly promise and swear [or, being one of the people called Quakers, do solemnly affirm] , That I will faithfully, impartially, and honestly, according to the best of my skill and knowledge, execute the trust reposed in me by the master, wardens, and Society of the art. and mystery of Apothecaries of the city of London, as an Examiner, in the examination of every person who shall come before me to be examined as to his fitness or qualification to act as an apothecary, or assistant to an apothecary, as the case may be, and that without favour, affection, prejudice, or malice. ”

“ He may teach the Patients facile and easie Remedies, as to make a Clyster, apply Blisters, or Medicines to the feet, where they are needful, &c. and in many Cases may cure by well ordering his Patient only, without any Remedies at all, or but very few, being free to act for the Patients Health, without the grumbling of the Apothecary; and many other ways he may daily meet with, very advantageous to the Patient.
He will have little use of Conserves, Syrups, Lohocks, &c. a greater part whereof Sugar makes up, which doth more hurt to most persons, then the other ingredients do good. ”

“ If any faith was to be put in human testimony, many marvellous cures were really performed, the fame of which spread far and wide, and caused demands for these medicines to come in from places far beyond the precincts of the little town. Our old apothecary, now degraded by the overshadowing influence of his grandson's character to a position not much above that of a shop-boy, stood behind the counter with a face sad and distrustful, and yet with an odd kind of fitful excitement in it, as if he would have liked to enjoy this new prosperity, had he dared. ”

“ AN APOTHECARY'S PUN.
"Does your husband expectorate?" said an apothecary to a poor Irish woman who had long visited his shop for her sick husband—"Expect to ate, yer honour—no sure, and Paddy does not expect to ate—he's nothing at all to ate!" The humane man sent a large basin of mixture from a tureen of soup then smoking on his table.
A BITTER PUN.
An apothecary asserted that all bitter things were hot. ”

“ Plaisters in that Number, in Imitation of the Prudence and Integrity of the Foreign Physicians who have contracted their Dispensatories, shall be order’d, in the most rational, and efficacious Forms, to receive the Addition of all the natural Powders, Balsams, Gums, or the Chymical Medicines, the Apothecary will have his Trouble very much lessened, and with less Expence; the Patient will have his Disease much sooner cured, and his Life much better preserved. ”

“ When a physician finds a sick man improving with a certain plan of treatment, and wishes the same medication continued, usually he simply tells the patient to have his bottle refilled at the apothecary’s. ”

“ While the Physician is labouring at Theories, the Apothecary is perhaps deeply immers’d in Practice: and as all allow that nice Observation is of vast Use in Physic, while the one is searching into Causes, the other, if he improves as he ought the Opportunities he is furnished with, gains a Knowledge of Effects. Hence it appears, that an Apothecary is capable of being, not merely an useful, but a valuable Man to Society ”

“ This word only occurs in two passages, one being the well-known proverb, "Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour" (Eccles. x. 1) .
This passage requires a little explanation. By the word "apothecary" we must not understand a medical man, nor by the word "ointment" the mollifying substance used as an application for wounds. The ointment of Scripture signifies the various perfumed unguents used as scents and cosmetics for the living, as part of the preparation of the dead for the grave, and as an essential accessory to Jewish ritual. ”

“ A patient comes to the city for the purpose of consulting some experienced physician for a certain complaint. Probably he gets a prescription, with instructions to go to a certain respectable druggist or apothecary in town to have the [Pg 73] necessary medicines put up. Of course a respectable physician knows of a reliable apothecary. The patient, in nine cases out of ten, desires to retain the prescription, and often does so. He goes to another drug store, more convenient, for a second quantity of the same ”

“ As the conscientious discharge of his duty should be the aim of every apothecary, seeing that on his correct action depends, in no slight degree, the usefulness of the physician, no pains should be spared to secure the efficiency of the medicines dispensed, whether they be drugs or preparations. The latter should always be prepared of full strength, and according to the formulæ recognized by the United States Pharmacopœia, unless when otherwise specially ordered. ”

“ Such preparations generally “hail” from some obscure place or person, but are occasionally dabbled with by others who should give themselves to better things. It is self evident, from the nature of his calling, that the exclusive duty of the apothecary per se, is to make, as faithfully or skilfully as he may, the various preparations of the Pharmacopœia, as therein set down, when he is called upon to do so, and to compound accurately the prescriptions of the physician. ”

“ A common, fallacious belief is that Pharmacopœial recognition means that the drug recognized is of value; the fact is that the United States and other Pharmacopoeias have in them numerous drugs of very little use. The nature or motif, so to speak, of a pharmacopœia is not to distinguish between worthy and worthless drugs, but to see that a drug which is asked for is as sold by the apothecary pure, and that proper preparations of uniform strength are made by the apothecary. ”

“ A particular garden also was often appropriated to the apothecary, in order that he might rear in it the necessary plants, and which therefore was called the apothecary’s garden1021. Apothecaries’ shops for the use of courts were frequently established and directed by the consorts of princes; and it is a circumstance well-known, that many of the fair sex, when they have lost the power of wounding, devote themselves much to the healing and curing art, and to the preparation and dispensing of medicines. ”

“ I will give you sedatives, and tonics, and febrifuges, and plenty of doses of my famous medicines, taxacorum squeezetalis and t. puffinalis, to pull you down and build you up again; and you will not have to pay through the nose, as you must whenever an apothecary above ground catches you by that useful organ. ”

“ An apothecary’s shop is mentioned at Tubingen, under count Everhard, as an hereditary fief, the possessor of which bound himself to serve as physician and apothecary to the army in time of war. In the year 1500 duke Ulric of Wirtemberg allowed one Syriax Horn to establish an apothecary’s shop at Stuttgard, and appointed him his apothecary for six years. He was obliged to swear that he would supply government and all public officers, as well as the duke’s subjects, with medicines ”

“ It is unnecessary to multiply examples in proof of the numerous errors into which a physician must unavoidably fall, who presumes to compose prescriptions without a knowledge of the chemical habitudes of the different substances which he combines. The file of every apothecary would furnish a volume of instances, where the ingredients of the prescription are fighting together in the dark, or at least are so adverse to each other, as to constitute a most incongruous and chaotic mass. ”

“ The fact that almost all our medicines, whether in the condition in which we see them labelled at the apothecary's shop, or as prescribed by the family physician, have Latin names,—was often quoted in proof of this aristocratic feeling and tendency.
Now there was doubtless some foundation for this opinion. Medical men did then and still very generally do believe, that it is better, on the whole, for the mass of mankind to have nothing to do with these matters, except at the prescription of those who have given the best part of their lives to the study of [Pg 254] medicine and disease. ”

“ But the scarcity of physicians, especially in rural areas, left a medical gap that the apothecaries, trained through apprenticeship and many times more numerous, naturally moved to fill. In 1727 English law finally recognized and legalized the fact that for most people the apothecary-surgeon was the only available practitioner of medicine. In turn, the business of purveying drugs and compounding medicines passed from the apothecaries to the wholesale druggists and pharmaceutical chemists. ”

“ Instead of this they complacently go on trusting to chance, prescribing the first medicine they happen to find in their books, and leaving the patient and the disease to fight it out as best they can. They do not even trouble to enquire in what way the medicines they prescribe are prepared. Their laboratory, their furnace, their drugs are at the Apothecary's, to whom they rarely or never go. ”

“ Hospitaller or Matron for your counsel, writing in a book appointed for that purpose such medicines with their compounds and necessaries as appertaineth to the apothecary or this house to be provided and made ready for to be ministered unto the poor, every one in particular according to his disease. You shall not, for favour, lucre, or gain, appoint or write anything for the poor but such good and wholesome things as you shall think with your best advice will do the poor good, without any affection or respect to be had to the apothecary. ”

“ That if this judgment were right the apothecary would not dare to sell a few lozenges or a little electuary to any person asking for a remedy for a cold, or in other common cases where a medicine had a known and certain effect. That to give a monopoly in the treatment of disease to physicians would have most mischievous consequences; both rich and poor would be seriously taxed, and in the case of [154] sudden accidents or illnesses in the night when apothecaries were so frequently sent for, the danger of not permitting them to supply the necessary medicine might often be most serious. ”

“ Your design all ingenious persons approve highly, to whom I have communicated it. 'Tis frequent with a Master Apothecary that hath served but 2, or 3 years, nay some scarce one, to take Apprentices for as little, or less time, with a little more money then ordinarily; and presently they assume the Title of Doctors, though they understand no more then only to write to a whole-sale Apothecary in your City. And truly their couzenages here in the Country do exceed those in the City. ”

“ The apothecary is not justifiable in making inquiries relative to the patient or his disease, or remarks relative to the character or properties of the medicines prescribed, that are uncalled for, or likely to convey a wrong impression, through an ignorant messenger, to the patient, excepting it be done in a case where he has doubts in regard to the prescription, and wishes to satisfy himself, and here he should act with great discreetness. ”