Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/496

 how honorable was this branch of the science of medicine, that provision was made at Montpellier (in 1597) for regular instruction in surgery. But even then, for a period of several years, it was found to be a very difficult matter to keep the peace between the two groups of students—the medical and the surgical; the governing authorities being finally obliged, in order to prevent the encounters which frequently took place between the rival bodies, to appoint four a.m. as the hour when the instruction in surgery was to be given. Those students who were pursuing the course in medicine looked upon the surgical pupils as intruders, as men unworthy to associate with them, and they availed themselves of every possible opportunity for making their connection with the university unpleasant.

In Paris, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the surgeons formed themselves into corporations. Minor surgery was left entirely in the hands of the barbers (a word which is derived from the Latin "barbarus," uncultivated) and barber-surgeons. They were largely itinerant practitioners and army surgeons. As they traveled from one city to another, the more enterprising ones announced their approach by means of a sort of herald who proclaimed loudly the cures which his chief was able to accomplish. In the course of time the surgeons who lived in Paris formed themselves into the so-called "College of Surgeons." At a later date (1255) there was established in that city by Jehan Pitard, the surgeon of Louis the Ninth ("Saint Louis," 1215-1270), a more perfect organization under the name of the "College of Saint Cosmas," which was placed under the protection of Saints Cosmas and Damian. The members of this Brotherhood were known as "Surgeons of the Long Robe," to distinguish them from the Barber-Surgeons or "Surgeons of the Short Robe"; and they were also known as "Maitres Chirurgiens Jurés." Through the influence of Pitard this organization received from the King a set of governing rules or constitution.

It may prove interesting to learn who Cosmas and Damian were, how they came to be canonized, and for what reasons the organizers of the new brotherhood preferred