The great satirist, in _Pendennis_, gives us a brief sketch of the apothecary of the Georgian era in the early life of John Pendennis, who in the city of Bath practised as an apothecary and surgeon, “attending gentlemen in their sickrooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, and condescending to sell a brown-paper plaister to a farmer’s wife across the counter, or to vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery”. How he eventually merged into John Pendennis, Esq., of Fairoaks, Clavering, with a “family pride,” is it not described with the pen of inimitable genius in the pages of the story? CHAPTER XI. MARRYAT. In his novel entitled _Japhet in Search of a Father_, Captain Marryat introduces to us that eccentric apothecary, Mr. Phineas Cophagus; and although the character is doubtless exaggerated to some extent, it forms an amusing picture of the practising apothecary in the early part of this century. Japhet, who is taken in hand and apprenticed to the worthy practitioner, describes the shop looking upon Smithfield Market, with its usual allowance of green, yellow, and blue bottles. All the patent medicines in the known world were kept in stock, even to the all-sufficient medicine for mankind of Mr. Euony. The shop was large, and at the back part there was a most capacious iron mortar with a pestle to correspond. The proprietor himself, we are told, might have been forty-five years of age. “He was of middle height, his face was thin, his nose very much hooked, his eyes small and piercing, with a good-humoured twinkle in them. His mouth was large and drawn down at one corner. He was stout in his body, and carried a considerable protuberance before him, which he was in the habit of patting with his left hand complacently. But although stout in his body, his legs were mere spindles, so that in his appearance he reminded you of some bird of the crane genus. “He dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, white cravat, and high collar to his shirt; blue cotton-net pantaloons and Hessian boots, both fitting so tight that it appeared as if he was proud of his spindle shanks. His hat was broad-brimmed and low, and he carried a stout black cane with a gold top in his right hand, almost always raising the gold top to his nose when he spoke. “The apothecary’s assistant, Brookes, was a tall, fresh-coloured, but hectic-looking young man, and, with the ubiquitous Timothy, who took out the medicine, formed the staff of the establishment.” Japhet’s introduction to the rudiments of the profession was to pound up some drugs in the big iron mortar, which he did with a will until the perspiration ran down him in streams. He hadn’t been many months in the shop before he was left in charge with Timothy, who, after cudgelling his brains as to how they shall make a little money on their own account, agrees with Japhet to physic any one who comes in the shop. The story is related by Japhet as follows:—