History of the barber-surgeons of London / by T.J. Pettigrew.

  • Thomas Pettigrew
Date:
[1853]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the barber-surgeons of London / by T.J. Pettigrew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/132
    HISTORY OF THE BARBER-SURGEONS OF LONDON. BY T. J. PETTIGREW, F.R.S., P.S.A., VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. [Read at a 'meeting held in the Hall of the Company, Jan. 14th, 1852.] Assembled in the Hall of the Company of Barbers, for- merly Barber-Surgeons, it cannot but be interesting to take a glance at the history connected with it. Barber-Surgeon is a name now even more extinct than the bandaged pole which formerly constituted the ensign of their shops, and which is still to be met with in some places in London, but more frequently in the country. I need hardly remind my auditors that this pole is typical of a surgical opera- tion—bleeding—happily now not so often resorted to as formerly; for medical men, like many other classes of so- ciety, may be said to become more conservative as they increase in years, and are certainly more chary of the vital fluid than they were wont to be in former times. So com- mon, indeed, was the practice, that Ward, in his Diary, remarks: “ Physicians make bleeding as a prologue to the play.” The conjunction of two such opposite functions as shaving and surgery may appear to us in the present day as a remarkable incongruity; but recourse to the records of former times will enable us, perhaps, to perceive the reasons which led to the union of “ Barbery and Surgery”, as they are termed in various acts of parliament. The offices of the barber and the surgeon are alike manual; the very name of the surgeon, or chirurgeon, as in former times it was always written, implies its character; its derivation from the hand, xe'lP> the hand, and epyov, a work, establishes it; but medicine and surgery in early times, regarded as one and indivisible, their practices were united, and assist- ants were called in to the performance of those manual services which were deemed essential by the medical prac- titioner. Thus, although the union of barbery and surgery may at first, sight appear extraordinary, when we trace
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3