We have good grounds for supposing this to have been the case in the time of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, more that two thousand years ago. Nehemiah informs us that the son of an apothecary assisted in "fortifying Jerusalem unto the broad wall." Was not this the office of an overseer, or "keeper of a magazine"? Various artisans were employed to perform certain portions of the work, and who more appropriate or better qualified to oversee the rebuilding of the fortifications than "an officer appointed to take charge of the magazines"? One more reference we draw from Scripture,[2] viz., in Exodus xxxvii. 29, where "the holy anointing oil" (not for medicine, but for the tabernacle), "and the pure incense of sweet spices" (not medical), "were made according to the work [book?] of the apothecary." This, however, no more implies that the said "apothecary" was a medical man, a dispenser of physic, or versed in medical lore, than that the maker of shewbread (Lev. xxiv. 5) was necessarily a pharmacist. In fact, there seems to have been no need of an apothecary, as medicine dispenser, until about the latter part of the thirteenth century. The oldest known work on compounding medicines was written by Nicolaus Mynepsus, who died in the commencement of the fourteenth century. The first apothecaries were merely growers and dispensers of herbs, and were but a poor and beggarly set. Shakspeare's delineation of the "_poor apothecary of Mantua_," in Romeo and Juliet, so completely answers the description of the whole "kit" of druggists of the times, that we may be pardoned in quoting him. Romeo says,-- "I do remember an apothecary,-- And hereabouts he dwells,--whom late I noted In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples (herbs). Meagre were his looks; Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuffed, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds; Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, Were thinly scattered to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said,-- 'An' if a man did need a poison now, Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.' * * * * *