Notes on pharmacy in the olden time, collected and illustrated / by John Eagle.

  • Eagle, John.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on pharmacy in the olden time, collected and illustrated / by John Eagle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    54/66 (page 44)
    THE APOTHECARY’S SHOP. The disgiLstiiig nature of many of the articles kc]it in stock and constantly in jn-occss of manijjulation, must have given to the apothecary’s shop (f olden time an odour searcely so tolerable as that encountered in the pharmacies of the present day. The general a]>- pearance also was rather different, for, down to the seventeenth century a shop counter appears to have been unknown or exti'cmely rare, till then an ordin- ary table served the ])urpose. The earliest print of an apothecai’y’s counter i am acquainted with, is t)f the year IGUO, although in the llistoire des aputhicaires &c there is what is descril>ed as a ‘Vue interieurc d’un hopital an 14me .siecle.’ wherein the apothecary is re- presented behind a counter, yet with all resjiect to M Cretcur 1 will venture to express the opinion that the co.stumes of the apothecary and another individual who seems to be a physician, in reality belong to a jjcriod two or three centuries later. The latter half of the 17th century witnessed a great development in the apothecaries’ trade and after in- creased trade came improvements in the fitting up of