144

APOTHECARIES.

I

those subsidiary arts, became indispensable. Monopoliesin certain articles also became the necessary consequence;the preparation of drugs, likewise, from necessity too,constantly acquired additional expense.

Soon after the practice of physic had become thus general,and in proportion to new discoveries in that art, the sacredscience of chymistry arose; and as the erection of furnaces,and the fitting up of laboratories was also necessarily expen-sive, in justice it certainly became proper that those whohad incurred just charges, should be indemnified in someway; the most obvious was, therefore, to restrict the saleof those articles they prepared to themselves, or theiracknowledged agents. It, therefore, tacitly followed, thatpharmacy next was separated from the physician’s practice.

The art of the apothecary, as has been suggested, in theinfancy of this revived art in Europe , was also employed,as well in preparing physical compounds as in manufacturingthose delicacies which are now made by confectioners andcooks.

In most large and opulent cities, those medical establish-ments were made and supported at the public expense, andwere under the direction of the magistracy. Independentof the warehouse of the apothecary, and the laboratory ofthe chymist,*it was also customary for them to have a phy-sical garden, for the cultivation of certain choice, and per-haps exotic plants and simples.

In the courts of princes and other great persons, it wasusual for princesses and the ladies, the consorts of suchpersonages, to have the appointment of the apothecary tothe establishment; and it has been archly remarked, that itis known when ladies have lost the power to kill, they feela disposition to heal, and benevolently to attend to thepreparation and dispensing of medicines. The fact is, whenthe female mind has seen the futility of those little arts theywere taught to appreciate in infancy, and which dispositionhad “'grown with their growth and strengthened with theirstrength the divine principle of benevolence is so stronglyimplanted in their nature, and which nothing but falseeducation had endeavoured to smother; at this periodalluded to, their reason fully resumes its empire, andthey only follow the natural bias of a mind divinely attem-pered to all the harmony of humanity in actions whichennoble the moral character of rational existence; for asHomer expresseth by the medium of Nestor, a more thanv -oracular truth, when he says, on seeing Machaon carriedwounded off the field :