A Respectable Occupation: - University of Hertfordshire Research ...

or by pharmaceutical chemists. 44 Also we know that there were 107
apothecaries‘ assistants, who held the Society‘s certificate, employed in
Hospitals, Infirmaries, Dispensaries, Poor Law Hospitals and with friendly
societies in England and Wales. 45
So it would seem that by 1758, there were dispensers employed by the
British Navy who had been examined by the Society of Apothecaries. In
addition, the Russian Navy employed apothecaries‘ assistants, who were not
qualified apothecaries. For a period around the middle of the nineteenth
century, dispensing in civilian hospitals was being performed by
apothecaries, dispensers (some of whom might have been formally qualified
by passing the apothecaries‘ assistant‘s examination) and by unqualified
laboratory men. But by the fourth quarter of the century all three of these
classes of dispenser were being superseded by men who had passed the
Pharmaceutical Society‘s qualifying examination. We also know that in
1871 the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty required that candidates
for employment as dispensers in naval hospitals had to have passed the
Pharmaceutical Society‘s ‗minor‘ examination. 46
The Society‘s early emphasis after the passing of the 1815 Act was,
understandably, to establish the examination for the licentiates and it was
not until 1843 that they published the first syllabus for the assistant‘s
44 Matthews, History of Pharmacy in Britain, p. 176.
45 Society of Apothecaries Archive, Box 9, E/4/4/1/1/, List of Assistants of the Society of Apothecaries,
London Holding Hospital, Infirmary, Dispensary, Poor Law, M.A.B. & other Public Appointments, no
date.
46 The Calendar of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (London, 1871), pp. 237-238.
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