Page:The Hunterian Oration,1838.djvu/20

12 between the physicians and the togati, or surgeons of the long robe of the new Society of St. Cosme and St. Damien, until at length the latter were permitted to join the University. But the introduction of the barbers, a source of constant and bitter feud between the high contending parties, is too curious an interlude to be altogether omitted. It would be an unpardonable oversight in the briefest chronicler of our art to suppress the mention, however unpalatable, of the long and intimate incorporation of our fraternities, and I cannot avail myself of the soft Dean’s example,


 * "Who never mentions hell to ears polite.”

The origin of the barber-craft is as follows: By a Bull of Alexander III. the neglected regulation of the tonsure was revived, and strictly enjoined; this obliged the priests to require the services of a barber, and thus their servants became barbers. By constantly attending upon the only informed men of that day, the barbers picked up some knowledge of physic; and the priests, being confined to their cloisters, employed them to visit their patients and perform the minor operations. Hence they learned to bleed, bandage, and dress wounds, and became regularly installed as subordinate medical attendants on families. The barbers, always a mercurial race, animated by