the regulation of the supply of drugs became the subject of a lively debate in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century. The basic question underlying this debate was, who should determine the availability of drugs in society, consumers, producers, or officials? From these discussions, three distinct models of regulation can be constructed: consumer sovereignty, occupational control, and bureaucratic regulation. By adding a local/national dimension to these categories, a six-fold classification can be produced. Within consumer sovereignty, a distinction can be made between the nationwide, individualistic, free-market model of the classical economists and the local, popularist, communal model of the democratic radicals. The subtypes of occupational control are based on the difference between regulation by local guilds and that by national professional associations. Similarly, regulation by local and central government can be distinguished. This classification is not intended as an analytic, conceptual typology of drug regulation but merely as a rough-and-ready sorting device. Its aim is the understanding of specific historical events and conditions, not the creation of logical, rational, universal theories.

The practice of pharmacy by the apothecary from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century obtained its characteristic features from origins in the medieval urban economy. The guild system with its strict control over who might practise a given craft, who might be trained, how one was to be trained, and how the craft was to be practised, provided the framework within which the apothecary operated. Craft guilds have been subject to widely different assessments.