I have read that in the 17th century a house displaying the Rhinoceros of the Apothecaries Company meant that the owner was a doctor. Would he (I'm assuming they were all men - could be wrong!) have been called a 'doctor' in those times?>> Hello Leigh, I can't claim to know much about the Apothecaries' Company, or whether displaying a rhino indicated membership, but I'm pretty sure that in the 17th century you were only called doctor if you had the appropriate university degree, and that very few apothecaries would have had any degree at all, let alone a doctorate. I believe medical practitioners of the period called themselves Physician if they had a degree, or Surgeon if they did not, while Apothecaries were what we would nowadays call dispensing chemists (or maybe druggists in America?), though I gather their trade extended rather further beyond mere sale of drugs, into diagnosis and prescription and general treatment, than is the case today. Regards, Matt Tompkins Blaston, Leics