reign the President and Censors of the College summoned the Wardens of the Grocers' Company and all the apothecaries of London and the suburbs to appear before them, "and enjoyned them that when they made a dispensation of medicine they should expose their several ingredients (of which they were composed) to open view in their shops for six or eight days that so the physicians passing by might judge of the goodness of them, and prevent their buying or selling any corrupt or decayed medicines." The grocers and apothecaries do not appear to have raised any objection to this decree. Whether they obeyed it or not is not stated.
Incorporation of the Apothecaries.
The first Charter of Incorporation was granted to the apothecaries by James I in 1606, but this did not separate them from their old foes, the grocers. They continued their efforts, however, and with the aid of friends at Court they obtained a new Charter in 1617, which gave them an entirely independent existence as a City Guild under the title of the Society of the Apothecaries. This is the only London guild which has from its incorporation to the present time admitted only actual apothecaries to its fraternity.
Another peculiarity claimed by one of the Company's historians (Dr. J. Corfe: "The Apothecary") is that the Guild of Apothecaries is the only City Company which is called a Society. He believes that this may be attributed to the supposed fact that the corporation was modelled on a similar association founded at Naples in 1540 under the name of Societa Scientifica.
Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the King's first physician, and Gideon de Laune, pharmacien or apothecary to the
