In message <d7.12d4a446.2e5e8bb1@aol.com>, YeagerLA@aol.com writes >Hi >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' They would possibly have called themselves doctors, or have patients who referred to them as such, but apothecary was correct. And in something like 1670, the Physicians of London raised a major fuss about other medical men who called themselves doctors and purported to diagnose, rather than just hand out herbal remedies or mistures prescribe by actual doctors. They claimed that they were the only professional doctors - 'surgeons' were then a sub group of the Barbers' Company, and Apothecaries were an offshoot of the Grocers' company, so there. Given the great shortage of any sort of medical men, apothecaries still had an important part to play, and one of the things they did to perfection was to 'invent' new treatments and mixtures, which would have a vogue if they cured some important person. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society