The Society of Apothecaries is a London institution founded in 1617 by royal charter from King James I, originally created to regulate the practice of preparing and selling medicines. Over four centuries, it evolved from a trade guild into one of the most influential bodies in British medical history, shaping how doctors were trained, licensed, and allowed to practice. It still exists today as both a historic livery company and an active medical examining body.
Why It Was Created
Before 1617, apothecaries belonged to the Company of Grocers, a trade guild that lumped together anyone who sold goods by weight, whether spices, dried fruits, or medicinal compounds. This arrangement made little sense for practitioners who needed specialized knowledge of drugs, dosages, and plant-based remedies. King James I granted a separate charter establishing the “Worshipful Society of Apothecaries,” giving them the right to self-govern and to purchase their own meeting hall.
The Society acquired its permanent home in 1632, buying a hall in the Blackfriars district of London for £1,800. That hall was gutted during the Great Fire of London in September 1666, with only the original stone walls left standing after the flames reached it on the fire’s third day. The Society decided to rebuild on the same site using the same plan, completing the work by 1672. Apothecaries’ Hall remains the oldest surviving livery company hall in the City of London and holds Grade I listed status.
From Pharmacists to Practicing Doctors
Apothecaries originally occupied a role closer to what we’d now call a pharmacist: they prepared and dispensed medicines prescribed by physicians. But in practice, especially outside London, apothecaries were the only medical practitioners most people could afford or access. They diagnosed illnesses, recommended treatments, and visited patients at home.
This blurred boundary led to a landmark legal fight. In 1704, the College of Physicians sued a London apothecary named William Rose for treating a butcher called Seale without a physician acting as intermediary. A lower court ruled against Rose, but the House of Lords reversed the decision. The case broke the Royal College’s monopoly on practicing medicine and legally established that apothecaries could treat patients, not just fill prescriptions. It was a turning point that expanded medical access across England, since apothecaries vastly outnumbered university-trained physicians.
Training and Apprenticeship
Becoming an apothecary meant completing a long apprenticeship. English law set a minimum of seven years from 1563 onward, and the Society enforced this rigorously. Apprentices learned by watching and copying their master, gradually taking on more independent tasks. Some worked with multiple masters over their term to broaden their experience. In London, apothecaries’ apprentices faced an unusual extra hurdle: they were examined by members of the College of Physicians, adding a layer of external scrutiny to their training.
Botanical knowledge was central to the work. In 1673, the Society established a garden along the Thames in the village of Chelsea, now known as the Chelsea Physic Garden. The roughly four-acre site served as a living classroom where apprentices learned to identify medicinal plants correctly. As the Society itself noted, it would be unwise to spend years studying how to heal people only to poison your first patient with a plant that looked similar to a safe one. The garden also served as a base for “herborising” expeditions, where apprentices and apothecaries traveled to nearby areas like Battersea and Putney Heath to collect and study wild plants.
Supplying the Navy and the Empire
The Society was not just a regulatory body. It ran a significant commercial operation out of Apothecaries’ Hall, manufacturing and selling medicines on a large scale. In 1703, it secured a contract to supply medicines to the Royal Navy through a venture called the Navy Stock. Under this arrangement, the Society prepared drugs at its own laboratory and distributed them to hospital ships and naval hospitals at Gosport and Jamaica. Medicine chests from Apothecaries’ Hall were even aboard the First Fleet of ships that transported convicts to Australia in 1788.
The Society also supplied the East India Company, first providing medicines worth £500 in 1703 and later securing a formal monopoly in 1766. The Company acknowledged that the Society’s prices were higher than other suppliers’, but purchased from them anyway because, as records noted, “there was a certainty of being supplied by them with the best medicines and drugs.” These contracts gave the Society financial power and further shifted the balance away from the College of Physicians, which found itself excluded from inspecting the medicines the Society supplied to the navy.
Setting the Standard for Medical Licensing
The Society’s most lasting impact on British medicine came through the Apothecaries Act of 1815. This legislation made the Society the main examining body for medicine in England and Wales, giving it responsibility for organizing education and training requirements. The Act required apothecaries to complete a five-year apprenticeship and made it compulsory for anyone dispensing medicines to hold the Licence of the Society of Apothecaries (LSA). For the first time, there was a standardized, enforceable qualification for medical practice below the level of a university-educated physician.
The LSA became, in effect, the basic medical qualification for general practitioners across England. It created a framework that would eventually feed into the modern system of medical registration.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s License
One of the more remarkable chapters in the Society’s history involves Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. After the Royal College of Physicians rejected her attempt to sit their exams in 1864, she turned to the Society of Apothecaries and qualified as a Licentiate on 28 September 1865. This made her one of the first women to obtain a recognized medical qualification in Britain. The Society subsequently changed its rules to prevent other women from following the same path, a restriction that took years of further campaigning to overturn.
The Society Today
The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries still operates from its rebuilt hall in Blackfriars. It no longer regulates pharmacy or general medical practice, but it remains an active examining body. It currently administers seven postgraduate diplomas in specialized fields: forensic pathology, the history of medicine, the philosophy of medicine, genitourinary medicine, medicine in conflict and catastrophe, forensic medical sciences, HIV medicine, and tropical medicine and hygiene. These qualifications are recognized within the medical profession and represent a continuation of the Society’s centuries-old role in setting standards for medical knowledge.