Page:The Hunterian oration, for the year 1819.djvu/22

 blisters to draw the peccant humours from the surface. Finding these fellows handy with edge tools, the priests taught them to bleed and perform such little operations as they were competent to direct, as well as to make salves and poultices, and to dress wounds and sores. Such was the origin of barber-surgery. When, however, the Popes perceived that the medical practice of the priests took them from their proper calling, and obliged them after various edicts, reluctantly to relinquish it, the office of physician was then adopted by other scholars upon the same claim or pretension, that of being able to read the Greek and Roman writers on medicine; and ever since, scholastic learning, and academical honours, have been considered as essential attributes to the character of a physician.

In the fourteenth century, these barbers and reputed surgeons pushed themselves forwards into the practice of surgery in France, to a degree that induced the surgeons in ordinary to petition the legislature to interfere, and an order was obtained that the barbers should not be permitted to prac-