From the time when Bulleyn called him the physician's cook, down to the present, generation, the pure apothecary is found holding a very subordinate position. His business is to do unpleasant drudgery that a gentleman finds it unpleasant to perform, but which cannot be left to the hands of a nurse. The questions to be considered previous to becoming an apprentice to an apothecary, put in Chemberlaine's "Tyrocinium Medicum," well describe the state of the apothecary's pupil. "Can you bear the thoughts of being obliged to get up out of your warm bed, on a cold winter's night, or rather morning, to make up medicines which your employer, just arrived through frost and snow, prescribes for a patient taken suddenly or dangerously ill?--or, supposing that your master is not in sufficient business to keep a boy to take out medicines, can you make up your mind to think it no hardship to take them to the patient after you have made them up?" &c., &c. When such services were expected from pupils studying for admittance to the craft, of course boys with ample means, or prospects elsewhere, did not as a rule desire to become apothecaries. Within the last fifty years changes have been affected in various departments of the medical profession, that have rendered the apothecary a feature of the past, and transferred his old functions to a new labourer. Prior to 1788, it is stated on authority there were not in all London more than half-a-dozen druggists who dispensed medicines from physicians' prescriptions. Before that time, the apothecaries--the members of the Apothecaries' Company--were almost the sole compounders and preparers of drugs. At the present time it is exceptional for an apothecary to put up prescriptions, unless he is acting as the family or ordinary medical attendant to the patient prescribed for. As a young man, indeed, he sometimes condescends to keep an open shop; but as soon as he can get on without "counter" business, he leaves the commercial part of his occupation to the druggist, as beneath his dignity. The dispensing chemists and druggists, whose shops, flashing with blue bottles (last remnant of empiric charlatanry), brighten our street corners and scare our horses at night, are the apothecaries of the last century. The apothecary himself--that is, the member of the Company--is hardly ever found as an apothecary _pur et simple_. He enrolls himself at "the hall" for the sake of being able to sue ungrateful patients for money due to him. But in the great majority of cases he is also a Fellow or Member of the College of Surgeons, and acts as a general practitioner; that is, he does anything and everything--prescribes and dispenses his prescriptions; is at the same time physician, surgeon, accoucheur, and dentist. Physic and surgery were divided at a very early date in theory, but in practice they were combined by eminent physicians till a comparatively recent period. And yet later the physician performed