Thus emancipated from the supervision of the physicians, the apothecaries began to feel their own importance, and most of them prescribed boldly for patients, without consulting a doctor. The ignorance of many of them was only equalled by their impudence. It is not unusual, at the present day, for not only apothecaries, but their most ignorant clerks, to prescribe for persons, strangers perhaps, who call to inquire for a physician; and cases, too, where the utmost skill and experience are required. The following amusing anecdote is sufficiently in accordance with facts within our own knowledge to be true, notwithstanding its _seeming_ improbability:-- ANECDOTE OF MACREADY, THE ACTOR. The handwriting of Macready, the actor, was curiously illegible, and especially when writing a pass to the theatre. One day, at New Orleans, Mr. Brougham obtained one of these orders for a friend. On handing it to the latter gentleman, he asked,-- "What is this, Brougham?" "A pass to see Macready." "Why, I thought it was a physician's prescription, which it most resembles." "So it does," acquiesced Mr. Brougham, again looking over the queer hieroglyphics. "Let us go to an apothecary's and have it made up." Turning to the nearest druggist's, the paper was given to the clerk, who gave it a careless glance, and proceeded to get a vial ready. With a second look at the paper, down came a tincture bottle, and the vial was half filled. Then there was a pause. Brougham and his friend pretended not to notice the proceedings. The clerk was evidently puzzled, and finally broke down, and rang for the proprietor, an elderly and pompous looking individual, who issued from the inner sanctum. The clerk presented the paper, the old dispenser adjusted his eye-glasses, examined the document for a few seconds, and then, with a depreciating expression,--a compound of pity and contempt for the ignorance of the subordinate,--he proceeded to fill the vial with some apocryphal fluid, and, giving it a professional "shake up," duly corked and labelled it. [Illustration: THE "FREE PASS" PRESCRIPTION.] "A cough mixture, gentlemen," he said, with a bland smile, as he handed it to the gentleman in waiting, "and a very excellent one, too. Fifty cents, if you please." In a copy of the London Lancet, 1844, is reported Dr. Graham's bill. In the same number of which is a reply by an apothecary, who asks if "the old and respectable class of apothecaries are to be forever abolished;" and he quotes the assertion from one of the articles in the bill: "Is it not a notorious fact that the masses of chemists and druggists know nothing of the business in which they are engaged?" Dr. Graham certainly ought to have known.