rest by a judgment of the House of Lords
in 1703 (_Rose v. College of Physicians_, 5 Bro. P. C. 553), when it was
decided that the duty of the apothecary consisted not only 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 powers were given to the
company by an act authorizing them to appoint a board of ten examiners,
without whose licence no person should be allowed to dispense medicines
in London, or within a circuit of 7 m. 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 licence. 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, speci