Having sought autonomy for many years, the apothecaries finally separated from the Grocers' Company in 1617 when they were granted a Royal Charter by James I.
Amongst the notable people who qualified in medicine as a Licentiate of the Society (LSA) were the poet John Keats (1816), Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1865, thereby becoming the first openly female recipient of a UK medical qualification) and Nobel Prize winner Sir Ronald Ross KCB FRS (1881).