The founders of the Chelsea Garden were the members of the Society of Apothecaries, who have maintained it for over two centuries entirely for scientific purposes, as was stipulated in the deed of gift, executed by Sir Hans Sloane, in which the growing or cultivation of plants for purely pharmaceutical purposes, or for trade, was strictly forbidden. The origin of this so-called Physic Garden was somewhat amusing, and anything but scientific. The ground was first fixed upon as an eligible spot for building a boathouse for the state barge of the Apothecaries’ Company. This ground was walled in about 1674, and planted with trees in 1678, and herbs were grown in it for use in the company’s laboratories, some of these plants being from time to time exchanged for others from the University of Leyden. Sir Hans (then Dr.) Sloane bought the estate in 1712; and, as might have been expected of a man of his parts, a pupil of the chemist Stahl and of the botanist Tournefort, and a friend of the great Ray, a new era of usefulness was begun in the Chelsea Garden. In 1722 he handed over the land to the Apothecaries’ Society, at a yearly rental of £5, and an undertaking that fifty specimens of fifty species of distinct plants, well dried and mounted as herbarium specimens and properly named, should be handed over to the Royal Society each year until 2000 had been duly delivered. In a catalogue issued in 1730, written by Miller, the head gardener, are enumerated 499 plants, mostly medicinal, so one may judge of the extent of the gardens at that time. Exotics were cultivated in hothouses in 1732, and in 1736 Linnæus paid a visit to the garden. Thomas Dover, the originator of Dover’s powder, was born in England in the year 1660. He settled and practised medicine for a time in Bristol; left there for a period, and returned again. He lived with, and was contemporaneous with Sydenham. He gained much professional reputation on the occasion of a severe epidemic of fever. This may have suggested to him the use of ipecacuanha and opium in a compound.