Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/574

 *teenth century, when it must have been very galling to the pride of an honorable and experienced surgeon to be placed as it were under the tutelage of the physicians who were his official associates in certain hospitals—as, for example, in St. Bartholomew's, London. The following extracts from the "Orders" or "Articles" of that institution (1633) explain more precisely what is meant by the use of the word "tutelage":—

9. That no surgeon or his man do trepan the head, pierce the body, dismember or do any great operation on the body of any but with the approbation and by the direction of the Doctor (when conveniently it may be had) and the surgeons shall think it needful to require.

13. That every surgeon shall follow the directions of the Doctor in outward operations for inward causes, for recovery of every patient under their several cures, and to this end shall once in the week attend the Doctor, at the set hour he sitteth to give directions for the poor.

(From St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, Vol. XXII., 1886.)

Among the English surgeons of the seventeenth century there appears to have been only one who attained some degree of eminence, viz., Richard Wiseman, who is often spoken of as the Ambroise Paré of England. Haeser mentions 1625 as the date of his birth, and at the same time states that he was in the service of the Stuart Kings from Charles the First to James the Second. It seems to me highly probable that this statement regarding the date of Wiseman's birth is erroneous; for if it be accepted as correct, then he (Wiseman) must have been only fifteen years of age when he first started out with the prince (in 1640) on the latter's wanderings through France and the Low Countries. On the other hand, if Wiseman was really born in 1625, then we shall be justified in assuming that he traveled with the prince at first simply as his companion and not in a professional capacity; and we shall be further justified in assuming that he acquired his medical and surgical training during his residence on the continent.