Effective 18 September 2026, updated 5 October 2026. Village Apothecary operates villageapothecarytraining.com. By using the site you agree to these terms and to the privacy policy.
The Village Apothecary is a study game. Fictional villagers describe their complaints, you choose a remedy from four, and the case notes explain the answer. It exists to help students of herbal medicine learn to tell similar remedies apart. It is a teaching tool and a game, and nothing more.
Nothing on this site is medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The villagers are invented. The cases are written to teach a distinction, not to describe any real person. A remedy that is "right" in a case is right for the fictional picture in that case, according to the source lessons, and says nothing about what is right for you or anyone you know.
Do not use the game to decide how to treat yourself or another person. If you are unwell, see a qualified practitioner. If it is urgent, call your local emergency number. We are not responsible for any decision made on the basis of what you read here.
Use the site as a person, for study. Do not:
We may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, and we may remove posts that do.
The cases, the villagers, the case notes, the remedy descriptions, the artwork, the letters and the name The Village Apothecary™ are the property of Village Apothecary and are protected by copyright and trademark. The teaching they carry is drawn from published sources, which are credited where they are used; the writing is ours.
We give you a personal, non-transferable licence to use the site for your own study for as long as you have an account and follow these terms. That licence does not include copying the content or using it to build anything else, and it ends when your account does.
What you write in the common room stays yours. By posting it you give us permission to show it to other students on the site, which is the whole point of posting it, and to keep a copy for as long as it is up. You can remove your own posts. You are responsible for what you post; do not post what you have no right to.
We aim to keep the shop open all hours and to keep your progress safe, and we take reasonable care to do both. We do not promise the site will always be available or free of faults. We may change, pause or withdraw any part of it, and we may change the cases, the shelves and the rules of the game as we improve it. Where a change affects your saved progress we will try to carry it over.
Full access is sold as a subscription, by the month or by the year at a discount. The price, what it includes and how it renews are shown on the checkout page before you pay, and payment is taken by Stripe; we never see or store your card. A subscription renews automatically until you cancel, which you can do at any time from the "manage subscription" link on the shelves screen, and you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for. Fees already paid are not refunded, except where the law requires it or where we have failed to provide the site for a substantial part of a period. We may change the price with notice before your next renewal. Anyone can try five clients free without paying anything.
The site records ten minutes of simulated clinical hours for each client you treat correctly without opening the case notes, counting each client once. At your request, at any point you choose, we issue a certificate of completion for the hours you have completed by then, stating those figures as our log holds them, and anyone with its code can check it. We take care to count accurately and will correct an error you show us.
The hours are a record of simulated case work in a study game. They are not practice with living clients, and the certificate is a statement of hours completed, not a licence, a certificate of competence or an academic credit. We do not promise that any school, employer or professional body will accept them; that is for them to decide. We may change how hours are counted in future, and if we do, we will say so here and will not reduce hours you have already earned.
The shelves are released in modules on dates shown on the site. Those dates are our plan, not a promise, and may move.
The site is provided as it is. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss or harm arising from your use of the site or from anything in it, including any decision about health or treatment, any loss of progress, or any interruption. Where the law does not allow us to exclude liability, our liability is limited to the amount, if any, that you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.
You may stop using the site at any time, and may ask us to delete your account by writing to us from its email address. We may close an account that breaks these terms, or if we close the site, in which case we will give reasonable notice where we can. Sections on our content, what you post, and limits of our responsibility survive the end of the agreement.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Minnesota, United States, without regard to its conflict of law rules. Any dispute that cannot be settled by talking to us first will be heard in the courts of Minnesota, and you agree to that. If you are a consumer in a place whose law gives you protections that cannot be taken away by agreement, you keep them.
We may update these terms. We will change the date at the top and, for anything that matters, say so in the Monday letter. Using the site after a change means you accept it.
Village Apothecary, hello@villageapothecarytraining.com.