If there had not been a curious assemblage of materiel, in an old Roman tonstrina, it would not have been selected as an object for the pencil. That it was so selected, however, appears from a passage in Pliny, XXXV. 37. He is writing of Pureicus—arte paucis postferendus: proposito, nescio an destruxerit se: quoniam humilia quidem sequutus, humilitatis tamen summam adeptus est gloriam. Tonstrinas, sutrinasque pinxit, et asellos, et obsonia, ac similia—He had few superiors in his art: I know not if the plan he adopted was fatal to his fame; for, though his subjects were humble, yet, in their representation, he attained the highest excellence. He painted barbers’ and shoemakers’ shops, asses, eatables, and the like.
A rude sketch of Heemskerck’s picture of a barber’s shop lies now upon my table. Here is the poodle, with a cape and fool’s cap, walking on his hind legs—the suspended bleeding basin, and other et cætera of the profession.
Little is generally known, as to the origin and import of the barber’s pole. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, surgery was in such low repute, that farriers, barbers, sow-spayers, and surgeons were much upon a level. The truth of this, in respect to surgeons and barbers, has been established by law: and, for about two hundred years, both in London and Paris, they were incorporated, as one company. I remember a case, reported by Espinasse—not having the book at hand, I cannot indicate the volume and page—which shows the judicial estimate of surgery then, compared with the practice of physic. A physician’s fees, in England, were accounted quiddam honorarium, and not matter of lucre, and therefore could not be recovered, in an action at law. Upon an action brought for surgical services, the fees were recoverable, because surgeons, upon the testimony of Dr. Mead, were of a lower grade, having nothing to do with the pathology of diseases, and never prescribing; but simply performing certain mechanical acts; and being, like all other artificers and operatives, worthy of their hire.
Nothing can more clearly exhibit the low state of this noble science, at the time, and the humble estimation of it, by the public. Chirurgery seemed destined to grovel, in etymological bondage, χειρ εργον, a mere handicraft. Barbers and surgeons were incorporated, as one company, in the fifteenth century, in the reign of Edward IV., and were called barber-surgeons. At the close of the sixteenth century, Ambrose Paré, the greatest surgeon of his time in France, did not reject the appellation of barber-surgeon. Henry VIII. dissolved this union, and gave a new charter in 1540, when it was enacted, that “no person, using any shaving or barbery in London, shall occupy any surgery, letting of blood, or other matter, excepting only the drawing of teeth.” The barber-surgeon was thus reduced to the barber-dentist, which seems not so agreeable to the practitioner, at present, as the loftier appellation of surgeon-dentist. Sterne was right: there is something in a name. The British surgeons obtained a new charter, in 1745, and another, in 1800, and various acts have been subsequently passed, on their behalf. July 17, 1797, Lord Thurlow, in the House of Peers, opposed a new bill, which the surgeons desired to have passed. Thurlow was a man of morose temperament, and uncertain humor.
He averred, that so much of the old law was in force, that, to use his own words, “the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole, the barbers were to have theirs blue and white, striped, with no other appendage; but the surgeons’, which was the same, in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.”
Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, says, that the barber’s pole, used in bleeding, is represented, in an illuminated missal, of the time of Edward I., Longshanks, whose reign began in 1272. Fosbroke, in his Encyc. of Antiquities, page 414, says—“A staff, bound by a riband, was held, by persons being bled, and the pole was intended to denote the practice of phlebotomy.” According to Lord Thurlow’s statement, in the House of Peers, the pole was required, by the statute, to be used, as a sign. The first statute, incorporating the barber-surgeons, was that of Edward IV., as I have stated. The missal of Edward I., referred to by Brand, shows, that the usage was older than the law, and, doubtless, that the popular emblem was adopted, in the statute, to which Lord Thurlow refers, as still in force, in 1797.
In Brand’s Newcastle, I find, that “it is ordered, Dec. 11, 1711, that periwig-making be considered part and branch of the Company of Barber-Chirurgeons.”
The history of the pole is this: A staff about three feet high, with a ball on the top, and inserted, at the bottom, in a small cross-piece, was very convenient for the person to hold, who extended his arm, as he sat down, to be bled; and a fillet, or tape, was equally convenient for the ligature. These things the barber-surgeons kept, in a corner of their shops; and, when not in use, the tape or fillet was wound or twirled round the staff. When the lawgivers called for a sign, no apter sign could be given unto them, than this identical staff and fillet; much larger of course, and to be seen of men much farther.