It is no easy task to treat practitioners systematically according to occupation. Not only did some cross between occupations, the historian has also to contend with the fundamental problem of whether to examine the practitioner in the context of the descriptors applied by his clientele, or the identity that he might have assigned to himself, perhaps as a result of a specific qualification. Neither perspective can be ignored. Moreover, the changes in nomenclature and the differences between practitioners' own identities and those assigned to them accentuate the relevance of occupational descriptors. Thus it is worth examining practices according to the practitioners' own and assigned identities, and in the contexts of these to compare their practices in terms of geography and social range, and to see how these may have changed over the period.

The practices of apothecaries

There are 266 specific designations of ‘apothecary’ in the probate accounts. Of these 158 include the apothecary's name, so that it is possible to look for examples whereby a picture might be built up of the range of geographical and social markets served, and the services rendered by individuals who were referred to as ‘apothecaries’ on at least an occasional basis. This is supplemented by those who were not referred to as apothecaries in the probate accounts but who were otherwise designated as such (for example in their own probate documents or in records of freemen) and whose practices are also reflected in the probate accounts.