At a very early period in England a doctor looked for his palm to be crossed with gold, if his patient happened to be a man of condition. In Henry VIII.'s reign a Cambridge physician was presented by the Earl of Cumberland with a fee of £1--but this was at least double what a commoner would then have paid. Stow complains that while in Holland half-a-crown was looked upon as a proper remuneration for a single visit paid by a skilled physician, the medical practitioners of London scorned "to touch any metal but gold." It is no matter of uncertainty what the physician's ordinary fee was at the close of the sixteenth and the commencement of the seventeenth century. It was ten shillings, as is certified by the following extract from "Physick lies a-bleeding: the Apothecary turned Doctor"--published in 1697:-- "_Gallipot_--Good sir, be not so unreasonably passionate and I'll tell you. Sir, the Pearl Julep will be 6_s._ 8_d._, Pearls being dear since our clipt money was bought. The Specific Bolus, 4_s._ 6_d._, I never reckon less; my master in Leadenhall Street never set down less, be it what it would. The Antihysterick Application 3_s._ 6_d._ (a common one is but 2_s._ 6_d._), and the Anodyne Draught 3_s._ 4_d._--that's all, sir; a small matter and please you, sir, for your lady. My fee is what you please, sir. All the bill is _but_ 18_s._ "_Trueman_--Faith, then, d'ye make a _but_ at it? I do suppose, to be very genteel, I must give you a crown. "_Gallipot_--If your worship please; I take it to be a fair and an honest bill. "_Trueman_--Do you indeed? But I wish you had called a doctor, perhaps he would have advised her to have forebore taking anything, as yet at least, so I had saved 13_s._ in my pocket." "Physick lies a-bleeding" was written during the great Dispensarian War, which is touched upon in another part of these pages; and its object was to hold up physicians as models of learning and probity, and to expose the extortionate practices of the apothecaries. It must therefore be read with caution, and with due allowance for the license of satire, and the violence of a party statement. But the statement that 10_s._ was the _customary_ fee is clearly one that may be accepted as truthful. Indeed, the unknown and needy doctors were glad to accept less. The author of "The Dispensarians are the Patriots of Britain," published in 1708, represents the humbler physicians being nothing better than the slaves of the opulent apothecaries, accepting half their right fee, and taking instead 25 or 50 per cent. of the amount paid for drugs to the apothecary. "They (the powerful traders)," says the writer, "offered the Physicians 5_s._ and 10_s._ in the pound, to excite their industry to prescribe the larger abundance to all the disorders."