From a storekeeper to the physician’s cook? Early English references to pharmacists

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine early English references to those involved in storing, selling and making medicinal preparations. Also, we will attempt to find out how early pharmacists were perceived by other medical practitioners. The study is mainly based on the language material from two medical corpora Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT). In order to make the list of references to early pharmacists as comprehensive as possible, the online editions of the following dictionaries have been consulted: Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE), Middle English Dictionary (MED), and Oxford English Dictionary (OED).