Definition
In old legal records, *apothecarii* is a Latin term used to denote stewards or agents — persons entrusted with the management of accounts, property, or affairs on behalf of another. The term appears in medieval and early modern English records in an administrative rather than a medical sense.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): *Apothecary* — a person who prepares and sells medicines; a pharmacist or druggist. The plural *apothecaries* refers to such practitioners collectively.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "One who prepares and sells drugs or compounds for medicinal purposes; a druggist; a pharmacist."
The gap between common and legal meaning here is substantial and historically significant. In ordinary English — both modern and nineteenth-century — *apothecary* and its Latin plural *apothecarii* immediately evoke medicine and pharmacy. In old legal records, however, *apothecarii* carried no medical meaning at all, instead denoting stewards and account-keepers. A researcher must be alert to this divergence when working with Latin administrative documents.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research trap here is the modern association of the word with pharmacists or druggists. A researcher encountering *apothecarii* in old English legal records — particularly in manorial, ecclesiastical, or estate documents — must resist the instinct to read the term as referring to medical practitioners. In its legal record usage, the term carried the meaning of steward or procurator: a person managing accounts or acting as an agent for a principal.
Researchers working in pre-modern English records should treat *apothecarii* as a synonym for *procuratores* or *ratiocinatores* (accountants, stewards) rather than as a reference to the apothecary trade. Confusion on this point could fundamentally misdirect analysis of a document's subject matter — the passage in question may concern estate management or financial administration, not medical or pharmaceutical affairs.
Because the term appears in "old records" as characterized by Burrill, researchers should expect it almost exclusively in Latin-language documents predating the standardization of English legal drafting. It is unlikely to appear in records after the early modern period except as a deliberate Latinism.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole shelf source treating this term in a legal context, and its entry is brief: *apothecarii* is defined by reference to Spelman as meaning stewards (*ratiocinatores, procuratores*). Burrill's reliance on Spelman — Henry Spelman's *Glossarium Archaiologicum*, a foundational glossary of Latin terms in English records — situates this as a term of art drawn from medieval record practice rather than from formal legal doctrine.
No substantive legal definition beyond the Spelman reference appears in the standard historical law dictionaries. The term does not appear to have generated case law or statutory treatment; it is a vocabulary item for reading old records rather than a term carrying doctrinal weight. Researchers should treat Spelman's glossary as the authoritative source and Burrill as a secondary relay of that authority.
The gap between the historical legal meaning and the better-known commercial/medical meaning of *apothecary* (a seller of medicines and compounds) is not addressed by Burrill, presumably because the context of old administrative records made the stewardship meaning sufficiently clear to contemporary users of his dictionary.