THE BARBER-SURGEONS.
BARBER-SURGEONS’ HALL.
Much as we owe to the College of Physicians, we owe even more to the early surgeons, and there is certainly no spot in this city which has a greater interest for us as students of medicine than the hall of the Barbers’ Company in Monkwell Street, a street not far from the General Post Office. The house in Knightrider Street, the original home of the College of Physicians, is gone. The house in Amen Corner, the second home of the College, was burnt. The Grand College in Warwick Lane was deserted and sold, and has now completely disappeared. The Barbers’ Hall remains and commands our respect as being on the original spot, though not the original building where the study of anatomy took its rise in this country. The barbers and surgeons have occupied premises in Monkwell Street certainly since their first incorporation in 1460, possibly earlier. The present hall was built by Inigo Jones, and having partially escaped the fire in 1666, much of the original building remains, and certainly the present court-room and the elaborately carved shell canopy over the front door are both works which do credit to this famous architect. Originally, the hall stood detached from other buildings, and seems to have had a fair-sized piece of ground round it, and a garden at the back; and its theatre, one of Inigo Jones’s best works, rested on one of the bastions of the old city wall. With land at its present enormous value, it is not to be wondered at, though much to be regretted, that the Company has turned every available inch to account; and the medical antiquary who now goes in search of this, to us, almost sacred edifice, will need to be warned that it is hemmed in and hidden by warehouses. It was in 1540 that Henry VIII. gave a charter to the Barber-Surgeons, and Holbein’s famous picture of this event is the chief treasure of the Barbers’ Hall, which contains many other relics of medical interest. In this picture, which has been often engraved, and is doubtless familiar to many of you, there are certain points which merit our attention. It is a group of nineteen people, and it is probable that the portraits of all are faithful. The portrait of Henry VIII. was said by King James I. to be reported “very like him and well done,” and it is probable that the portraits of the others are equally good. The king is seated, and the eighteen persons receiving the charter are on their knees. These eighteen are arranged in two groups—a group of three on the right hand of the king, and a group of fifteen on the left. Those on the right are probably entitled to take precedence of the others, they are all members of the king’s household—viz., John Chambre, the king’s physician, who was, as we have seen, one of the six persons named in the charter of the College of Physicians; Sir William Butts, physician to Henry VIII., and one of the characters in Shakspeare’s play of that name; and Master J. Alsop, the Royal apothecary. The fifteen on the left are all surgeons or barbers. The chief, to whom the king is handing the charter, is Thomas Vicary, the king’s sergeant-surgeon, and the first medical officer appointed to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; of the others, Ayliffe, Mumford, and Ferris were king’s surgeons, and Symson, Harman, and Penn were king’s barbers; of the remaining eight little is known.
HOLBEIN’S PICTURE: HENRY VIII. GIVING A CHARTER TO THE BARBER-SURGEONS.
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