in the Ancient Military Art, a kind of line of circumvallation drawn round a place in order to besiege it. This was also called peritichismus. The first thing the ancients went about when they designed to lay close siege to a place, was the apotechismus, which sometimes consisted of a double wall or rampart, raised of earth; the innermost to prevent sudden sallies from the town, the outermost to keep off foreign enemies from coming to the relief of the besieged. This answered to what are called lines of contravallation and circumvallation among the moderns.

APOTHECARY. In Scotland this term is restricted to one who compounds and sells drugs, and is used synonymously with the term Druggist or Pharmaceutical Chemist. These have never in Scotland enjoyed any status higher than that of ordinary shopkeepers. In England, again, the term means a general practitioner in medicine who also dispenses and sells drugs to his patients or the public; and the Apothecaries' Company of London is not only one of the city corporations, but also by an act of parliament licenses the general practitioners over England and Wales to deal in or sell drugs.

From early records we learn that the different branches of the medical profession were not regularly distinguished till the reign of Henry VIII, when they had separate duties assigned them, and peculiar privileges. In 1518 the physicians of London were incorporated; and the barber-surgeons in 1540. These two bodies as soon as constituted overstepped their jurisdiction by prosecuting all those practitioners who did not belong to either body, and who constituted the great mass of the practitioners of the healing art. It was necessary, therefore, to pass an act in 1543 for the protection and toleration of these numerous irregular practitioners, to most of whom the term apothecary was applicable, as they usually had shops for the sale of medicines. In April 1606 James I. incorporated the apothecaries as one of the city companies, uniting them with the grocers. On their charter being renewed in 1617 they were formed into a separate corporation, under the title of the "Apothecaries of the city of London." These apothecaries appear very soon to have begun to prescribe as well as to dispense medicines, which was resisted by the College of Physicians as an encroachment on their rights, but apparently unsuccessfully, as the apothecaries made good their claims. In 1722 an act was obtained empowering the Apothecaries' Company to visit the shops of all druggists who were not members of the company, and to destroy such drugs as they found unfit for use. They appear to have worked this act so rigorously, or rather oppressively, as to put down all druggists who were not members of their body. In 1748, great additional powers were given to the company by an act empowering them to appoint a board of ten examiners, without whose license none should be allowed to dispense medicines in London, or within a circuit of seven miles round it.

In 1815, however, an act was passed which gave the Apothecaries' Company an entirely new position, empowering a board of twelve of their number to have the sole right of examining and licensing apothecaries throughout England and Wales. It also enacted that from the 1st of August that year (excepting those already in practice), none but those licensed by them should have right to practise as an apothecary; and at the same time it was made imperative that candidates for examination should have served a five years' apprenticeship with a member of the company.

As in small provincial towns or villages, no one can practise without keeping a supply of drugs for his patients, this act has given the apothecaries the complete control of the medical profession in England. Every general practitioner must not only have their license, but must have served an apprenticeship with a member of their body. If a practitioner does not dispense drugs the Apothecaries' Company cannot interfere with him.

Before this act came into operation a large proportion of the medical practitioners of England were graduates of the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin, or licentiates of the Royal Colleges of Physicians or Surgeons—none of whom could attain that status without a full and liberal course of medical education, and undergoing a rigorous examination. This act at once sunk the requirements of the medical practitioner to the lowest ebb; and we have the avowal of the company itself that the course of study required by the company for its license was of a very inferior description. Since 1832, chiefly in consequence of the outcry for medical reform, a much superior course of study has been demanded; but the practical working of the Apothecaries' Act of 1815 has been most hurtful to the medical profession in many respects, and justice demands that the attention of the legislature should be turned to this subject with the view of relieving the most pressing grievances. Though desirable that every medical practitioner should know the drugs he uses, and be able to dispense them, it does not follow that only those are capable of doing this who are licensed at Rhubarb Hall. All those who are recognized in any part of Her Majesty's dominions as regularly licensed practitioners, by possessing the diploma of a chartered licensing medical corporation, should most unquestionably be freed from the operation of this act. Till this be granted, the Apothecaries Act of 1815 must be considered as a foul blot on the Statute Book; and if the medical profession, instead of wasting, as they have done, time and money in the many late vain attempts at a chimerical uniformity of medical education and general union of the whole profession, were to have united for this point alone, it would never have been refused by government, and have relieved them from the only real grievance of which they have to complain. (J.S.—K.)