98 • Confusiontians,” had challenged traditional medical wisdom in a pamphlet war of
words. They spoke of a curative “vital spirit” inside the body that responded
to the right chemical combinations. The plague offered them a splendid op-
portunity to gain a competitive edge over their old-fashioned rivals. Al-
though about forty of the fifty doctors in the College of Physicians had fled
to the country, many chemical physicians and their chemist associates were
staying on. They claimed to wish to help the poor. If a desperate Londoner
wanted to try something new and had the purse to do so, this group offered
cures with salts, sulfur, mercury, and liquid gold. “Fight fire with fire,” these
avant-garde doctors declared, meaning that one should attack an ailment
with an antidote as potent as the symptoms rather than following the Galen-
ist use of opposites (e.g., a cooling substance such as beer for a fever).
Immediately below the physicians on the medical ladder were the apothe-
caries, who were pushing for a new royal charter to gain the right to treat pa-
tients as the physicians did, not just hand out remedies prescribed by them.
Apothecaries had learned their trade mainly through apprenticeship, yet
most had acquired a basic understanding of academic medicine along the
way. Many already practiced medicine on their own, combining traditional
medical advice and regimens with herbals, antipestilential pills and potions
whose efficacy was borne out by a loyal following.
Apothecaries could easily be found about London. Thomas Spooner had a
shop at the Red Lion, and Roger Dixon’s house was close to the Thames in
Water Lane near the Customs House. There were apothecary shops in
Cheapside and around the Royal Exchange, and several were on main thor-
oughfares in Westminster. In Saint Giles in the Fields, William Boghurst
dispensed medical advice and drugs at the White Hart.
Next down the ladder were surgeons, whose services were less costly than
were doctors’ treatments or apothecaries’ drugs. The Company of Barber-Facing page
Fig.5.Anadvertisementfrom the Society of Chymical Physitians touching
medicines... for the Prevention, and for the Cure of the plague.Broadside li-
censed for printing on June 28 , 1665. The eight chemical physicians listed in this ad
used God’s presumed blessing of their “search into... the mysterious nature of dis-
eases” and the king’s command to prepare plague remedies to attract clients and ad-
vance their campaign to organize as a rival to the College of Physicians.By permission
of the British Library, shelfmark C. 120 .h. 5