Needless to say, the war now waxed fiercer than ever. The physicians were divided among themselves, and the anti-dispensarians refused to meet the dispensarians in consultation. The apothecaries naturally recommended the anti-dispensarians to their patients, and consequently it was only the independent ones who could afford to maintain the struggle. Scurrilous pamphlets were written on both sides, and one long poem, Garth’s Dispensary, which was less venomous than most of the literature on the subject, but which as a poem had no merits which could justify the reputation it attained, complicated the struggle from the physicians’ point of view. Johnson says that in addition to its intrinsic merit it “co-operated with passions and prejudices then prevalent.” His sympathies are indicated by his remark that “it was on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority.” One line in the book (the last in the passage quoted below) has attained currency in the English language. Expressing satirically the complaints of the apothecaries, Garth says: Our manufactures now the doctors sell, And their intrinsic value meanly tell; Nay, they discover too (their spite is such) That health, than crowns more valued, costs not much; Whilst we must shape our conduct by these rules, To cheat as tradesmen or to fail as fools. THE APOTHECARIES WIN. Notwithstanding the sympathy of Dr. Johnson, Pope, and many other famous contemporaries, the quarrel ended in the comparative triumph of the apothecaries. The physicians, though reluctant to enforce what they believed to be their statutory powers, were goaded into law, and at last brought an action against a London apothecary named William Rose, who they alleged had infringed the Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII. Rose had attended a butcher in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields named Seale, and had administered “proper medicines” to him. He had no licence from the Faculty, and in his treatment of Seale had not acted under the direction of any physician. He had neither taken nor demanded any fee for his advice. Those were the facts found by the jury who first heard the case. The College claimed a penalty of five pounds per month for the period during which Rose had thus practised. The Charter granted to the physicians in the tenth year of Henry VIII, and confirmed by an Act of Parliament passed in the fourteenth and fifteenth year of that reign, contained a clause forbidding any person not admitted by the College to practise the faculty of medicine in London or within seven miles thereof under a penalty of one hundred solidi for every month during which he should thus infringe the law.