The zeal with which gradually the better class of physicians pursued their scientific studies became more and more conspicuous, evidenced in many ways by the hardships with which some of them had to deal, as witness the struggles of many of the great anatomists of those days.
And so in time the clergy disappeared almost entirely from the ranks of public physicians, and after the Thirty Years' War completely lost their supremacy even in literary matters, this being gradually usurped by the nobility and the more educated laymen; but even then knowledge was pursued under difficulties, especially the study of anatomy. It was not until 1658 that a mounted skeleton could be found in Vienna. Strasburg obtained one in 1671. The handling of the dead body, which we regard as so necessary, was in those days avoided as much as possible. The professor of anatomy rarely, if ever, touched it himself, but he lectured or read a lecture while the actual dissection was done with a razor by a barber, under his supervision.
Practical instruction in obstetrics, which would seem almost as important as that in anatomy, was not given in those days; male students only studied it theoretically. In the Hôtel Dieu, in Paris, that part which was devoted to instruction in midwifery was closed against men. It was the midwives in those days who enjoyed the monopoly of this teaching, and upon whom the greatest dependence for obstetrical ability was placed. The physicians proper, or medici puri of the seventeenth century, were individuals of greatest dignity and profoundest gravity, who wore fur-trimmed robes, perukes, and carried swords, who considered it beneath them to do anything more than write prescriptions in the old Galenic fashion. Some continuation of this is seen in the distinction made even to-day in England between the physicians who enjoy the title of doctor and the surgeons who affect to disdain it. These old physicians knowing nothing of surgery, nevertheless demanded to be always consulted in surgical cases, claiming that only by this course could things go right. Still when elements of danger were introduced, as in treating the plague, they were glad enough to send the barber surgeons into the presence of the sick, whom they merely inspected through panes of glass. Very entertaining pictures could be furnished you illustrating the habits of the physicians of two or three hundred years ago in dealing with these contagious cases. The masks and armor which they wore and the precautions which they took would seem to indicate protection rather against the weapons of mediæval warfare. At one time they were advised that if they must go into actual contact with these patients they should first repeat the Twenty-second Psalm. You may find in the old books, if you will hunt for them, curious pictures illustrating the precautions taken a few hundred years ago against the pestilence, of whose nature they knew nothing, and seeing them you may imagine the vague dread and even the abject fear which led the physici puri or physicians to send the barbers in to minister to plague-stricken patients, while they contented themselves with ministering at long range to their needs.
But gentlemen, I fear lest I weary you with a longer rehearsal of mediæval customs and student follies. While they have all passed away some of them have survived either in tradition or in modified form, as will surely have occurred to you while they were rehearsed. You will not fail to note the steady progress of an ethical evolution which has toned down the barbarities and the asperities of the past, and which has substituted a far more ennobling life-purpose and method of its accomplishment than seemed to actuate your predecessors of long ago.
It is small wonder that the students of those days bore an ill-repute with their surrounding neighbors. You may see better now, perhaps, why the medical student even of to-day has to contend with a prejudice against both his calling and himself, a prejudice begotten of the many debaucheries and misdeeds of his predecessors, and, I am sorry to say, even certain excesses of to-day. I do not know how I may more fittingly terminate these remarks than by reminding you that the profession which you students hope to enter has suffered most seriously in time past from the character of the men who have entered it, and that even to-day certain of its members fail to have a proper regard for its dignity. It is axiomatic that those slights and indignities from which we often suffer, and the neglect and indifference of which we often complain, are in effect the result of our own shortcomings, and that we are ourselves largely to blame because of that which does not suit us. I beg you then to remember that even at the outset of student life there should be ever before you such an ideal of intellectual force and dignity, of power, of co-ordination of mind and body, as may keep you ever in the right way, so that when you at last attain your goal you may deserve that sort of benediction which I find in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays (Custom of the Country, v. iv.):
"So may you ever
Be styled the 'Hands of Heaven,' Nature's restorers;
Get wealth and honors, and, by your success
In all your undertakings, propagate