BARBER-SURGEONS, AND THE PROGRESS OF CHIRURGICAL ART.
No consideration should render man more thankful to his Creator, and justly proud of the progress of human intellect, than the perfection to which the art of surgery has been carried. In its present improved condition, we are struck with horror at the perusal of the ancient practice, and marvel that its barbarity did not sooner induce its professors to diminish the sum of misery it inflicted on their victims. Ignorance, and its offspring Superstition, seemed to sanctify this darkness. Improvement was considered as impious and unnecessary; and to deny the powers of the chirurgical art, heresy against the holy men, who alone were permitted to exercise it.
This supposed divine attribute of the priesthood can be traced to remote ages: Æsculapius was son of Apollo, and princes and heroes did not consider the art of surgery beneath their dignity. Homer has illustrated the skill of Podalirius and Chiron; and Idomeneus bids Nestor to mount his chariot with Machaon, who alone was more precious than a thousand warriors; while we find Podalirius, wrecked and forlorn on the Carian coast, leading to the altar the daughter of the monarch whom he cured, and whose subjects raised a temple to his memory, and paid him divine honours.
Tradition informs us, that in the infancy of the art all its branches were exercised indiscriminately by the medical practitioners. It was not then supposed that the human body was subject to distinct affections, external and internal; yet, as its study advanced, the ancients were led into an opposite extreme, and we find that in Egypt each disease became the province of a special attendant, regulated in his treatment by the sacred records handed down by their hierarchy.
Herodotus informs us, that “so wisely was medicine managed by the Egyptians, that no physician was allowed to practise any but his own peculiar branch.” Accouchments were exclusively the province of females.
These practitioners were remunerated by the state; and they were severely punished, when, by any experimental trials, they deviated from the prescribed rules imposed upon them, and, in the event of any patient dying under a treatment differing from the established practice, the medical attendant was considered guilty of a capital offence. These wise provisions were made, says Diodorus, in the full conviction that few persons were capable of introducing any new treatment superior to that which had been sanctioned and approved by old practitioners.
Pliny complains that no such laws existed in Rome, where a physician was the only man who could commit murder with impunity; “Nulla præterea lex,” he says, “quæ puniat inscitium capitalem, nullum exemplum vindictæ. Discunt periculis nostris, et experimenta per mortes agunt: medicoque tantum hominem occidisse impunitas summa est.”
By one of these singular anomalies in public opinion, this supposed divine science was soon considered an ignoble profession. In Rome it was chiefly practised by slaves, freedmen, or foreigners. From the overthrow of the Roman empire till the revival of literature and the arts in Europe, medicine and surgery sought a refuge amongst the Arabians, who studied both branches in common; for, though exiled to the coast of Africa in point of scientific cultivation, it was necessarily cultivated in other countries, and in the greater part of Europe became the exclusive right of ecclesiastics. In time, however, it was gradually wrested from their hands by daily necessities; and every one, even amongst the lowest classes, professed himself a surgeon, and the cure of the hurt and the lame was intrusted to menials and women.
As the church could no longer monopolize the art of healing, it became expedient to stigmatize it, although that very faculty had but lately been their boast; but it had fallen within the powers of vulgar and profane comprehension, and therefore was useless to maintain sacerdotal pre-eminence. In 1163, the Council of Tours, held by Pope Alexander III., maintained that the devil, to seduce the priesthood from the duties of the altar, involved them in mundane occupations, which, under the plea of humanity, exposed them to constant and perilous temptations. The edict not only prohibited the study both of medicine and law amongst all that had taken religious vows, but actually excommunicated every ecclesiastic who might infringe the decree. It appears, however, that the temptations of the evil one were still attractive, as Pope Honorius III., in 1215, was obliged to fulminate a fresh anathema on transgressors, with an additional canon, ordaining that, as the church abhorred all cruel or sanguinary practices, not only no priest should be allowed the practice of surgery, but should refuse their benediction to all who professed it.[26]
The practice then fell into the hands of laymen, although priests, still regretting the advantages that it formerly had yielded them, were consulted in their convents or houses; and when patients could not visit them without exposing them to clerical censure, they asserted their ability to cure diseases by the mere inspection of the patient’s dejections; and so much faith was reposed in this filthy practice, that Henry II. decreed that upon the complaints of the heirs of persons who died through the fault of their physicians, the latter should suffer capital punishment, as having been the cause of their patient’s death, unless they had scientifically examined what was submitted to their investigation by the deceased’s relatives or domestics: and then proceeded to prescribe for the malady.