The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays

by Roswell Park

Moreover there persist to-day in Europe many relics of the old customs, and the barber surgeon is still a common figure in Germany, and particularly in Russia, where the really educated surgeons are still too few for a vast and widespread population. It must be remembered also that the Church gradually imbued men's minds with a horror of a dead body, and of the profanation which followed having anything to do with it, and surrounded the study of anatomy with every possible obstacle and obloquy; even to such an extent that to be known as having dissected a human body was to be exposed to indignity, assault and even death. It was, therefore only intense yearning for knowledge, on the part of earnest men, which then permitted anatomical instruction to be given or encouraged.

During the middle ages the greatest medical school in the world was situated at Salernum (or Salerno), but a short distance from Naples. This is not the place in which to discuss its history, although it became famous above almost every other institution of learning of any kind, and though, by one of the freaks of history, even the site of the buildings is now lost and no one seems to know just where they stood. In his time, namely, in 1240, the Emperor Frederick II was the great patron of this college; his decrees concerning the regulation of the study and practice of medicine deserve attention to-day. A part of one of his enactments reads as follows: "Since it is possible for a man to understand medical science only if he has previously learned something of logic, we ordain that no one shall be permitted to study medicine until he has given his attention to logic for three years. After these three years he may if he wishes proceed to the study of medicine." And again: "No surgeon shall be allowed to practise until he has submitted certificates in writing, of the teachers of the faculty of medicine, that he has spent at least one year in that part of medical science which gives skill in the practice of surgery, that in the college he has diligently and especially studied the anatomy of the human body, and is also thoroughly experienced in the way in which operations are successfully performed and healing afterwards brought about."

When first we hear of medical men in Great Britain they were commonly spoken of as leeches, as among the Danes and Saxons; later the clergy introduced books from Rome, and almost every Monastery had some brother possessed of more or less knowledge of the medicine of the day. The College of Salernum later gave great impetus to the study of medicine, even before the days of William the Conqueror, which was strengthened by the influence emanating from Naples, and particularly from Montpellier. For centuries the Catholic clergy were almost the only persons with sufficient education to study and practise physic; which profession became in time so lucrative that many of the monks abandoned their monasteries, neglecting their religious duties, and applied themselves to the study of medicine. To such an extent was this true that in 1163 the Council of Tours forbade monks staying out of the monastery for more than two months at a time, or teaching or practising physic. In taking this action the Council only repeated what had been ordained by decree of Henry III in 1216, and by the second Council of Lateran in 1139. No restraint was at first placed upon the secular clergy, and many of the Bishops and other church dignitaries gained both money and honor by acting as physicians to Kings and Princesses.

Next to the clergy the Jews possessed the largest share of learning. Their nomadic life permitted an intercourse with the different nations of the world, which was denied to most others, and there were many who studied medicine and practised, not only among those of their own race but amongst Moors and Christians alike. The priests became extremely jealous of Jewish physicians and of lay surgeons, and endeavored to secure through Rome a formal excommunication of all who committed themselves to the care of a Jew, while by canon law no Jew might give medicine to a Christian. But so celebrated were the Jewish physicians, and so superior to everything else was men's desire for life and strength, that even the power of Rome could not exclude them from practice. Still less could the clergy restrain the lay surgeons from the performance of their craft, and though it would appear that at first, in England, the priests were not disposed to separate surgery from medicine, the Pope became jealous of so much interruption to the duties of the clergy and looked upon the manual part of surgery as detracting from clerical dignity. Accordingly were made numerous attempts to debar priests from the performance of surgical operations. In 1215 the ecclesiastics were prohibited by Pope Innocent III from undertaking any operation involving the shedding of blood, while by Boniface VIII at the close of the thirteenth century, and Clement V, about the beginning of the fourteenth century, surgery was formally separated from physic and the priests positively forbidden to practice it. It is to the Church then that we owe this absolute abandonment of surgery to an illiterate and grasping laity. For some time, however, the priests kept their hold upon surgery by instructing their servants, the barbers, who were employed to shave their own priestly beards, in the performance of minor operations. It was these men, who were in some degree qualified by the instruction of the clergy, who first assumed the title of barber surgeons, and who gradually formed a great fraternity.

In France it was in the reign of Louis XIV that the hairdressers were formally separated from the barber-surgeons, the latter being incorporated as a distinct medical body. In London it was in 1375 that the Company of Barbers were practically divided into two sections, containing respectively those who practiced shaving, and those who practiced surgery. In 1460 the surgeons were finally incorporated by themselves as the Guild of Surgeons and took their place as one of the liveried companies of the city of London. Similar separation occurred in the original great Guild of Weavers, who divided into the Woollen Drapers and Linen Armourers, the latter afterwards becoming the wealthy and powerful Company of Merchant Tailors.

To trace the history of the London Company of Barbers a little more fully, it was first formed in 1308 and incorporated in 1462 by a charter. In one of the statutes of Henry VIII it was enacted that: "No person using any shaving or barbery in London shall occult (i. e. practise) any surgery, letting of blood or other matter except only drawing of teeth." In 1540 Parliament passed an act allowing the United Companies of Barbers and Surgeons each to have yearly the bodies of four criminals for dissection. In 1518 the barbers and surgeons were united in one company; the former being restricted from all operations except tooth drawing, and the latter having to abandon shaving and hair dressing.

It is interesting also to note that in Oxford, for instance, the Barbers, Surgeons, Waferers and Makers of "Singing bread" were all of the same fellowship, from 1348 to 1500; when, at last, the Cappers, or knitters of caps, were united to them, in 1551, the barbers and waferers abrogated their charter and took one in the name of the city, until 1675, when they received a charter from the University.

The London Guild of Surgeons appears to have been first a mere fraternity which had incorporated itself, and to have originated from an association of the military barber surgeons who had been trained in the hundred years war with France, 1337 to 1444. Its membership, however, was select, and when the physicians declined an alliance with it, it amalgamated with the barber companies in 1540. The United Company of Barbers and Surgeons was peculiar in that strangers and those who were not free men were admitted, while the journeymen of the craft formed a subordinate body within the company. In 1745 the surgeons separated from the barbers and formed a surgeon's company which rapidly acquired influence. By a foolish blunder it forfeited its charter in 1796 but was subsequently incorporated by George III, in 1800, as the Royal College of Surgeons in London; a body which has since maintained its identity, grown tremendously in wealth and strength, and having become one of the licensing bodies of England, has acquired the finest collection of books and specimens in the world and has numbered the brightest intellects which the English surgical profession has contained.

In Dublin the Barber Surgeons were incorporated as a guild by charter granted by Henry VI, in 1446. In 1576 they were amalgamated with the independent surgeons, and by Queen Elizabeth with the barber surgeons and wig-makers. This confraternity was dissolved in 1784 and the College of Surgeons founded immediately afterwards. In Edinburgh the barbers and surgeons were united in 1505, to be separated at about the same time as elsewhere in Great Britain.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the continent medicine and surgery were abruptly separated, and the latter was almost entirely in the hands of the barbers. For hundreds of years the dissection of corpses and the embalming of those who could afford it, were in the hands of first the butchers and later of the barbers. The greatest contempt was everywhere shown for one who attempted any surgery. If for instance a nobleman while being bled by a barber received the slightest harm the poor barber was heavily fined, while, should the gentleman die, the culprit was given into the hands of the dead man's relatives to be dealt with as they desired. Throughout the monasteries and whenever the influence of the Church was felt it was forbidden to the monks, who had the monopoly of knowledge, to perform any surgical operation since the Church abhorred the shedding of blood.[8]