© 2003 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
Weighed in the Balance? The Corporation of Apothecaries in Bordeaux, 1690–1790
1 School of Art and Humanities, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Headington, Oxford, OX3 OBP. E-mail: amsmith{at}brookes.ac.uk
Based on a collective biography of apothecaries, surgeons, and physicians in Bordeaux between 1690 and 1790, this article offers a counterbalance to the prevailing view of apothecaries. It suggests that, although numbers may have been falling and corporations failing elsewhere in France, the favourable situation of Bordeaux aided the survival of the corporation of apothecaries in that city. It suggests that apothecaries were important in providing a wide range of goods and services to patients, and traces their involvement in retail, wholesale, and international trade. Control of numbers is shown to be linked to a desire to exploit their monopoly of the market, which led to increases in wealth for individual practitioners. A change in traditional inheritance strategies is linked to a new emphasis on merit, and to knowledge obtained through training outside the confines of the apprenticeship system. The ‘secrets of the craft’ are seen to be undermined by the public nature of the emerging science of chemistry. The corporation of apothecaries in Bordeaux was transformed through its absorption of three new types of practitioner—entrepreneurs, pharmacists, and scientists—yet it survived due to the substantial and continuing presence of traditional, locally born, and locally trained apothecaries.
Keywords: apothecary; pharmacy; Bordeaux; France; medical practitioner; corporation; chemistry