Notwithstanding the sympathy of Dr. Johnson, Pope, and many other
famous contemporaries, the quarrel ended in the comparative triumph of
the apothecaries.
The physicians, though reluctant to enforce what they believed to be
their statutory powers, were goaded into law, and at last brought
an action against a London apothecary named William Rose, who they
alleged had infringed the Act passed in the reign of Henry VIII. Rose
had attended a butcher in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields named Seale, and
had administered “proper medicines” to him. He had no licence from
the Faculty, and in his treatment of Seale had not acted under the
direction of any physician. He had neither taken nor demanded any fee
for his advice.
Those were the facts found by the jury who first heard the case. The
College claimed a penalty of five pounds per month for the period
during which Rose had thus practised. The Charter granted to the
physicians in the tenth year of Henry VIII, and confirmed by an Act of
Parliament passed in the fourteenth and fifteenth year of that reign,
contained a clause forbidding any person not admitted by the College
to practise the faculty of medicine in London or within seven miles
thereof under a penalty of one hundred solidi for every month during
which he should thus infringe the law.
The jury having found the facts already quoted, referred to the
Court of Queen’s Bench the legal question whether the acts performed
constituted the practice of medicine within the meaning of the Act. The
case was argued three times in the Court of Queen’s Bench--(so it is
stated in the report of the proceedings in the House of Lords),--and
ultimately the judges decided unanimously in favour of the contention
of the College. Thereupon, on behalf of Rose a writ of error was moved
for in the House of Lords demanding a reversal of the judgment. The
counsel who argued the appeal were S. Dodd for Rose, and F. Brown for
the College. The case was heard on the 15th of March, 1703.
In support of the appeal it was argued that if the judgment
were allowed to stand it would ruin not only Rose but all other
apothecaries. That the Act was a very old one, and that the constant
usage and practice ought to be taken into account. That if this
judgment were right the apothecary would not dare to sell a few
lozenges or a little electuary to any person asking for a remedy for
a cold, or in other common cases where a medicine had a known and
certain effect. That to give a monopoly in the treatment of disease
to physicians would have most mischievous consequences; both rich and
poor would be seriously taxed, and in the case of sudden accidents or
illnesses in the night when apothecaries were so frequently sent for,
the danger of not permitting them to supply the necessary medicine
might often be most serious.
To these contentions the counsel for the College replied that by
several orders physicians had bound themselves to attend the poor
free, either at their own offices, or, if sent for, at the patient’s
house. That out of consideration for the poor they had gone further by
establishing Dispensaries where the medicines they prescribed could be
obtained at not more than one-third of the price which the apothecaries
had been in the habit of charging. That in sudden emergencies an
apothecary or anyone else was justified in doing his best to relieve
his neighbours, but that in London, at least, a skilled physician
was as available as an apothecary, and that this emergency argument
ought not to be used to permit apothecaries to undertake all sorts of
serious diseases at their leisure. That there was nothing to prevent
apothecaries selling whatever medicines they were asked for, but that
to permit them to treat cases however slight involved both danger and
expense, because a mistake made at the beginning of a distemper might
lead to a long illness, and in any case the apothecary would charge for
much more medicine than was necessary.
After hearing the arguments “it was ordered and adjudged that the
judgment given in the Court of Queen’s Bench be reversed.”