The Story of London

by Henry B. Wheatley

It was very long before the doctors gave up the making of extraordinary plasters and decoctions. Apparently they had the assistance of laymen on occasions. Dr. Furnivall has printed in his edition of Vicary’s Anatomie of the Bodie of Man (1888) a series of ten recipes by Henry VIII., and his physicians, Dr. Augustyne, Dr. Butts and Dr. Cromer, taken at random from Sloane MS. 1047 (British Museum). Among these are ‘the Kinges Majesties owne plastre,’ ‘a black plastre devised by the Kinges Hieghness,’ ‘a plastre devised by the Kinges Majestie at Grenewich, and made at Westminstre, to take awaye inflammacions, and cease payne, and heale excoriations,’ ‘a decoccioun devised by the Kinges Majestie,’ and ‘a cataplasme made ungtment-lyke of the Kinges Majesties devise, made at Westminster.’

A conjoint Faculty of Medicine and Surgery was founded in 1423. On the 15th of May 1423 the Mayor and aldermen were petitioned for this purpose. ‘The petition prays that all physicians and surgeons practising in London may be considered as a single body of men, governed by a Rector of Medicine, with the assistance of two surveyors of the Faculty of Physic and two masters of the Craft of Surgery. There was to be a common place of meeting, consisting of at least three separate houses, one fitted with desks for examinations and disputations in philosophy and medicine, as well as for the delivery of lectures. The second house was for the use of the physicians, and the third for the convenience of the surgeons.’[134]

The petition was granted, and on the 28th May 1423 Master Gilbert Kymer was sworn before the Mayor and aldermen as Rector of the Faculty of Medicine. Dr. Kymer was a graduate of the University of Oxford, and physician to the household of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, and also an ecclesiastic. Dr. John Somerset and Dr. Thomas Southwell were sworn on 27th September to act as Supervisors of Physic. The former was also a graduate of Oxford University and a physician to Duke Humphry. Of the latter’s history Mr. Power could find nothing. There is no record ‘of the swearing in of a Rector of Medicine after 27th September 1424, nor is there any other indication of the continued existence of a conjoint college after 1425.’[135]

Dr. Kymer went to the west of England in 1428, and became Dean of Salisbury in 1449. He continued, however, to practise medicine, ‘for in June 1455 he was summoned to Windsor to attend Henry VI. in the fit of imbecility which attacked him after the first Battle of St. Albans.’[136] Little is known of the action of the physicians from 1427 until the College of Physicians was founded by Linacre in 1518.

Surgeons.—Barbers were of old humble practitioners in the art of surgery and performed minor operations such as bleeding, tooth-drawing, and cauterization. They largely assisted the clergy, in whose hands the practice of surgery and medicine was almost wholly confined. The action of the Popes, already alluded to, in forbidding the clergy to interfere in any matter connected with the shedding of blood as incompatible with the holy office caused the clergy to devote themselves specially to medicine, and the duties of the barbers were thereby largely extended.

Mr. D’Arcy Power has drawn attention to a matter which is of the greatest interest in the history of the profession, viz., that two types of surgeons flourished side by side in London during the Middle Ages—the military surgeons who formed the aristocracy of the profession, and the barber surgeons. As early as the Third Crusade (1189-1192) military surgeons ‘were in attendance upon the kings and nobles, often in a purely personal capacity, but in the thirteenth century they had formal gradations of rank and were known as “the Royal Surgeon,” the “Common Surgeon,” etc.’[137]

In 1308 Richard le Barber, the first master of the Barbers’ Guild, who dwelt opposite the Church of Allhallows the Less, in Upper Thames Street, was sworn at Guildhall, and in 1310 barbers were appointed to keep strict watch at the city gates, so that no lepers should enter the city.

John Arderne was an early surgeon of mark who is worthy of special notice as one of the first English writers on surgery. He had an extensive experience in the treatment of wounds, and it is supposed that at one time he was attached to the English forces during the French wars in the capacity of field surgeon. He was born in 1307, and practised at Newark from 1349 to 1370, when at the age of sixty-three years he settled in London.[138]

He was specially famous for his treatment of fistula, and he made his great reputation by curing Sir Adam Everyngham of this complaint after his case had been pronounced incurable by the chief doctors in France. Arderne had many distinguished patients and received very large fees. In his works he entered very fully into the history of his cases, and his mode of treatment, and when describing ‘ye mannere of ye leche’ he throws a remarkable light upon the professional ethics and habits of his time. He was by no means reticent as to the best means of getting over his patients and making them pay well. The surgeon is told to ‘beware of scarse askings,’ and as an example, Arderne says that, if he had to do with ‘a worthy man and a great,’ he charged 100 marks or £40 for a cure, ‘with robez and feez of an hundred shillyns terme of lyfe, by year.’ ‘Of lesse men’ he would take £40 or 40 marks without feez, but he adds ‘never in alle my lyf toke I lesse than an hundred shillyns for cure of that sekeness.’