Then culling various herbs of virtue tried,
While her white smock the needful bands supplied,
With many a coil the limb she swathed around,
And nature’s strength returned.
Chirurgery, or surgery—that is manual application—appears to have been the earliest branch of the healing art. We are told of a wonderful cure effected upon Queen Elgiva, whose beauteous face had been mutilated by the brutal clergy. Many superstitious practices were in the early days mingled with the operations of the surgeons, as well as of the physicians. History speaks of a man the muscles of whose legs were drawn up and contracted so as to defy all the skill of the surgeons, until an angel advised wheat flour to be boiled in milk, and the limb to be poulticed with it while warm; then all was well.
From the tenth to the twelfth century the practice of medicine and surgery, in England, was almost exclusively in the hands of the monks and clergy. So lucrative did they find it that many of the monks devoted themselves entirely to it, to the utter neglect of their religious duties. This the authorities of the church disapproved of, and made many attempts to restrain. At last, in 1163, it was enacted by the Council of Tours that no clergyman or monk should undertake any bloody operation. From that time |4| the clerics confined themselves to prescribing medicines, and the practice of surgery naturally fell into the hands of the barbers and smiths, who had previously been employed as assistants and dressers to the ecclesiastical operators.
The smiths soon found that most of the business was absorbed by the barbers: the latter kept little shops for cutting hair, shaving, bathing and curing the wounded, especially about the royal palaces and the houses of the great: the shops were marked by a striped pole and a basin, symbols that all the king’s subjects might know where to apply in time of need; (the fillet around the pole indicating the ribbon for bandaging the arm in bleeding, and the basin the vessel to receive the blood). The barbers became so important that in 1461 the freemen of “The Mystery of Barbers, using the mystery or faculty of Surgery,” obtained a charter from Edward IV., and were incorporated under the name of “The Company of Barbers in London,” and none were allowed to practise save those admitted by the company. Although this charter was several times confirmed by subsequent kings, yet side by side with the regular barber-surgeons there grew up a body of men who practised pure surgery, and who actually formed a company, called “The Surgeons of London.” In 1540, by Act of Parliament, these rival companies were united and named “The Masters, or Governors, of the Mystery and Commonalty of the Barbers and Surgeons of London.”
The third section of this Act, after reciting that persons using the mystery of surgery oftentimes meddled and took into their cure and houses people infected with pestilence, great pox, and other contagious infirmities, and also used or exercised barbery, as washing, or shaving, or other feats thereto belonging, “which was very perilous for infecting the King’s liege people resorting to their shops and houses and there being washed and shaven,” enacted “that no |5| manner of person within the City of London, suburbs of the same and one mile compass of said City of London, after the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord God then next coming, using barbery or shaving, or that hereafter shall use barbery or shaving within the said city, etc., he nor they, nor none of them, to his, her, or their use, shall occupy any surgery, letting of blood, or any other thing belonging to surgery, drawing of teeth only excepted; and furthermore, in like manner, whosoever that useth the mystery or craft of surgery within the circuit aforesaid, as long as he shall fortune to use the said mystery or craft of surgery, shall in nowise occupy nor exercise the feat or craft of barbery or shaving, neither by himself, nor by one other for him, to his or their use; and moreover, that all manner of persons using surgery for the time being, as well freemen as foreigners, aliens and strangers within the circuit aforesaid, before the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, next coming, shall have an open sign on the street side where they shall fortune to dwell, that all the King’s liege people there passing by may know at all times whither to resort for remedies in time of necessity ([2]).”
In 1745 this union of barbers and surgeons was dissolved; or, apparently, the surgeons ousting the barbers, received a new name and all the privileges of the old company, with the exclusive right to practise within London and for seven miles around. In 1800 the Surgeons’ Company was called “The Royal College of Surgeons, in London;” and this, in 1843, was changed to that of “The Royal College of Surgeons of England.”
In Scotland, at a very early day, the chirurgeons and barbers were united, and enjoyed many rights and privileges. In 1505 the “craftes of Surregeury and Barbouris” were |6| formed into a college or corporation, by the town council of Edinburgh, and became one of the fourteen incorporated trades of the city. George the Third erected this corporation into a Royal College, and now it is known as “The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.” In 1599, James VI., “to avoid the inconvenience caused by ignorant, unskilled, and unlearned persons, who, under the colour of chirurgeons, are in the habit of abusing the people to their pleasure, and of destroying thereby infinite numbers of his Majesty’s subjects,” incorporated the faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow; and gave them jurisdiction over the City of Glasgow and the adjoining counties. A recent Act of Parliament has very much shorn the privileges of this faculty ([3]).