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houses and were leaders in their community, often masters of several prosperous apprentices with whom they took substantial premiums. Dr Burnby traces the apothecary's rise and clarifies his place in the confused state of medical practice in the early modern period. She describes too the other scientific preoccupations that we might exp6ct apothecaries to have, including chemistry and botany, and also their wide-ranging cultural interests, buying books and visiting antiquities. Dr Burnby's survey displays an excellent range of sources, skilfully exploited and often newly used for the purpose of revealing apothecaries, not merely as names and dates but as men in their contemporary setting. Her literary approach fortunately avoids over-reliance on statistical techniques and her grasp of family networks should remind us that acquaintanceship oiled the wheels of early modern England. Perhaps the great unresolved puzzle to emerge from Dr Burnby's book is why apothecaries were generally held in low esteem by their contemporaries, "the veriest knaves in England" practising a "contemptible" trade. It is easy to see why the surgeon and especially the physician feared the apothecary as a rival, prepared to give professional advice free and make his profits from dispensing drugs. That many apothecaries did so well financially presumably aroused jealousy and envy among their competitors, who took refuge in the peculiarly English response of despising a man for making money unless he had risen from very humble origins. Many of the apothecaries whose careers are described by Dr Burnby were provincial men and it is gratifying to see them studied in detail, since they undoubtedly treated far more of the population than the London practitioners who have hitherto chiefly preoccupied medical historians. The rise of the pharmaceutical chemist is also considered, and Dr Burnby places his emergence earlier in the eighteenth century than has formerly been proved, as well as suggesting that the apothecaries' role in the patent medicine industry has been largely ignored. Dr Burnby's survey of a profession whose origins she knows so well, with many fascinating insights and trenchant comments, will be a most welcome addition to the medical history specialist and the reader interested in the making of early modern England.