Genre with Apothecary. Apothecary is a mostly archaic term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons, and patients.
The modern chemist or pharmacist has taken over this role. In some languages and regions, the word apothecary is still used to refer to a retail pharmacy or a pharmacist who owns one.
Apothecaries' investigation of herbal and chemical ingredients was a precursor to the modern sciences of chemistry and pharmacology. In addition to dispensing herbs and medicine, apothecaries offered general medical advice and a range of services that are now performed by other specialist practitioners, such as surgeons and obstetricians.
Apothecary shops sold ingredients and the medicines they prepared wholesale to other medical practitioners, as well as dispensing them to patients. In 17th-century England, they also controlled the trade in tobacco which was imported as a medicine.
Likewise, pharmacy translates as apotek in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, apteekki in Finnish, apoteka in Bosnian, aptieka in Latvian, апотека in Serbian, аптека in Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Ukrainian, Apotheke in German and apteka in Polish. The word in Indonesian is apoteker, which was borrowed from the Dutch apotheker. Use of the term in the names of businesses varies with time and location. It is generally an Americanism, though some areas of the Uni