from one of his clients. En revanche he had the first claim on the estate of a deceased debtor for the payment of his account.
In 1629 the Hotel de Ville of Paris granted to the apothecaries of that city a banner and blazon, the latter, which I do not venture to translate, being thus described:—"Couppé d'azur et d'or, et sur l'or deux nefs de gueulle flottantes aux bannieres de France, accompagnés de deux estoiles a cinq poincts de gueulle avec la devise 'Lances et pondera servant,' et telles qu'elles sont cy-dessous empreinctes."
In 1682, under Louis XV, after the Brinvilliers panic, the poison register was introduced, and regulations were framed forbidding apothecaries to sell any arsenic, sublimate, or drug reputed to be a poison except to persons known to them, and who signed the register stating what use they intended to make of their purchase. Earlier in the same reign the practice of pharmacy was strictly forbidden to persons professing the reformed religion.
The last of the royal edicts applying to pharmacy was issued in 1777 by Louis XVI, and, as already stated, this was the authority which finally separated the apothecaries from the grocers. Then came the Revolution, and in 1791 all restrictions on trades or professions, including pharmacy, were abolished. Some accidents having occurred, the Assembly passed an ordinance on April 14, 1791, declaring that the old laws, statutes, and regulations governing the teaching and practice of pharmacy should remain in force until a new code should be framed. This did not appear until April, 1803, under Napoleon's Consulate, and the law, which is still in force, is to this day cited in legal proceedings as the law of Germinal, year XI.
