Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

for each drug especially for hellebore and opium. Authors frequently refer back to
their predecessors such as Galen and their references to ‘third degree’ harp back to
the theory of humours. The emphasis has changed from the Chinese and Arab
works to European literature. The production of medical journals means that there is
an outlet for the increased research which was undertaken.
Chapter 6. 18 th Century
T
he Age of Enlightenment. The power of alchemy starts to fade as
experimentation increases.
1704 William Rose, a liveryman of the Society of Apothecaries, was
sued by the Royal College of Physicians for treating a butcher
without using a physician as an intermediary. The physicians won
the case. The defence said that ‘selling a few Lozenges, or a small
Electuary to any asking for a remedy for a cold, or in other ordinary
or common cases, or where the medicine has known and certain
effects, may not be deemed unlawful or practising as a physician,
where no fee is taken or demanded for the same. Furthermore the
physicians, by straining an act made so long ago, may not be
enabled to monopolise all manner of Physick solely to themselves
and be an oppression to the poorer families not able to go to the
charge of a fee.’ On appeal to the House of Lords, the decision was
reversed declaring that the public interest would be served if an
apothecary dispensing a remedy gave medical advice, but that he
would not be able to charge a fee for the advice (Mann, 1984).
These apothecaries later became the general practitioners of today.
As apothecaries were cheaper than physicians, advice was given to
a far greater number of patients than before, but it meant that all
patients were given drugs whether they were necessary or not.
1707 Sir John Floyer wrote the ‘The Physician’s pulse-watch; or an essay
to explain the old art of felling the pulse, and to improve it by the help
of a pulse-watch’. He was the first to give pulse rates; ‘In health there
is about 75 beats in a minute, and in fever 100.’ (Floyer, 1707). He
had had his pulse-watch especially made for him, which had a
second hand. Later in the century we see Samuel Bard in 1765,
William Withering in 1785 and Samuel Crumpe in 1793 all giving
pulse rates, but Hahnemann doesn’t mention them in his works in
the early 1800s.