Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/439

396 and deeply studied in physic." On which Lord Coke observes that it was well ordained that the professors of physic should be "profound, sad, discreet," etc., and not youths, who have no gravity and experience; for as one saith: In juveni theologo conscientiæ detrimentum, in juveni legista bursæ detrimentum, in juveni medico cœmeterii incrementum. (Bonham's Case, 8 Rep. 107 a, 117 a).

Some time more passed before any legal recognition was accorded to the inferior branch (as it was then considered) of the medical profession. The surgeons of London had an unincorporated society of their own, which, by Stat. 32 Hen. VIII. c. 42 (1540), was promoted to the dignity of a union with that ancient and worshipful company, the Masters or Governors of the mystery and commonalty of Barbers in London, the two organizations being incorporated as the company of Barbers and Surgeons of London, with the search, oversight, punishment, and correction, as well of freemen as of foreigners, for such offences as they or any of them shall commit or do against the good order of barbery or surgery, and with power to make and enforce by-laws for this purpose. The statute granted to the company the bodies of four malefactors annually, as subjects for dissection; not a very liberal allowance, if there were then, as has been estimated for a some what later period, eight hundred executions a year in the kingdom (1 Stephen Hist. Crim. Law, 468).

The barbers and surgeons, though united in one company, were not allowed to interfere with each other; barbers were forbidden to exercise surgery, "drawing of teeth only except," and surgeons were not to "occupy or exercise the feat or craft of barbery or shaving." It was nearly two centuries later that the surgeons were constituted a separate company (18 Geo. II. c 15).

The regular practitioners, thus recognized and supported by law, seem to have been very busy in asserting their privileges; so busy indeed as shortly to evoke the interference of Parliament in a remarkable Act, Stat. 34 & 35 Hen. VIII. c. 8 (1542-3), the preamble of which is perhaps the most astonishing on record, even in that age of preambles. The women, the mind-cures, and the botanic doctors must have felt much aggrieved at the way they were described and treated by the previous law, if we may judge by the language in which they now took their revenge on the "regulars." The Statute, after reciting the earlier Act of 3 Hen. VIII. proceeds thus: "Since the making of which said Act the Company and Fellowship of Surgeons of London, minding only their own lucres, and nothing the profit or cure of the diseased or patient, have sued, troubled, and vexed divers honest persons—as well men as women—whom God hath endued with the knowledge of the nature, kind, and operation, of certain herbs, roots, and waters, and the using and ministering of them to such as be pained with customable diseases,—as women's breasts being sore, a pin and the web in the eye, uncoomes of hands, scaldings, burnings, sore mouths, the stone, strangury, saucelin and morfew, and such other like diseases,—and yet the said persons have not taken anything for their pains and cunning, but have ministered the same to the poor people only for neighbourhood and God's sake and of pity and charity; and it is now well known that the surgeons admitted will do no cure to any person but where they shall know to be rewarded with a greater sum or reward than the cure extendeth unto; for in case they would minister their cunning to poor people unrewarded, there should not so many rot and perish to death for lack of help of surgery as daily do; but the greatest part of surgeons admitted be much more to blame than those persons that they trouble, for although the most part of the persons of the said craft of surgeons have small cunning, yet they will take great sums of money and do little therefor, and by reason thereof they do oftentimes impair and hurt their patients rather than do them