The Law and Medical Men

THE LAW AND MEDICAL MEN. CHAPTER I. EARLY PRACTITIONERS AND LAWS.

The first medical practitioners in England, of whom we have any record, were the Druids: these philosophers, theologians and soothsayers, also practised medicine and surgery, and were skilled in anatomy and physic. To add to the veneration in which they were held, to impress the ignorant masses with the idea that they had power with the gods and could prevail, and perhaps to cultivate a belief in the efficacy of the remedies provided, they mingled incantations and charms with their medicaments and nostrums. Their panacea was the mistletoe, cut from the sacred oak, with a consecrated hook of gold held in holy hands, on a mysterious night when the propitious beams of the waxing moon fell upon it; wrapped for a while in a sanctified cloth and treasured up in the holy of holies of the woodland god, this strange parasitic growth was deemed possessed of many virtues and was named All-heal. Two other herbs, the selago and samolus were also in those days highly valued for their medicinal efficacy.

To every healing herb a divinity was assigned by the Druids, and the good gods were ever ready to help suffering |2| humanity against the evil genii who presided over the poisonous and unwholesome.

These priests also considered the creeping through tolmens (or perforated stones) good for many diseases. Their best charm, however, was the anguineum, or snake's egg, produced ('tis said) from the saliva and frothy sweat of a cluster of snakes writhing in a tangled mass, tossed in the air by the fierce hissings of the serpents, and caught ere it fell to the ground in a clean white cloth. A genuine egg, though encased in gold, would float against a running stream and do many another marvel. The Druid seems to have been a herbalist, a believer in the faith or prayer cure, as well as a homoopathist, for in taking the diseased plant, the mistletoe, to cure diseases he anticipated the doctrine of similia similibus curantur.

Even in those old days, according to Tacitus, there were female physicians who competed with the practitioners of the other sex. The wives of the Druids exercised the calling of sorceresses, causing considerable evil by their witchcrafts, but caring for warriors wounded in battle. Later on women seem to have enjoyed a pre-eminence as physicians and surgeons in England. Thus are we told that a "Mayd" treated a wounded "Squyre,"

Meekely shee bowed downe, to weete if life

Yett in his frosen members did remaine;

And, feeling by his pulses beating rife

That the weake sowle her seat did yett retaine,

Shee cast to comfort him with busy paine.

Into the woods thenceforth in haste shee went,

To seeke for herbes that mote him remedy;

For she of herbes had great intendiment.

There, whether yt divine tobacco were,

Or panachæa, or polygony,

Shee fownd, and brought it to her patient deare,

Who al this while lay bleding out his hart blood neare. |3|

The soveraine weede betwixt two marbles plaine

Shee pownded small, and did in peeces bruze;

And then atweene her lilly handes twaine

Into his wound the juice thereof did scruze;

And round about, as she could well it uze,

The flesh therewith she suppled, and did steepe

T'abate all spasme and soke the swelling bruze;

And, after having searcht the intuse deepe,

She with her scarf did bind the wound from cold to keep (1).

Of fair Nicolette we read-

Her strength alone

Thrust deftly back the dislocated bone;

Then culling various herbs of virtue tried,

While her white smock the needful bands supplied,

With many a coil the limb she swathed around,

And nature's strength returned.

Chirurgery, or surgery-that is manual application-appears to have been the earliest branch of the healing art. We are told of a wonderful cure effected upon Queen Elgiva, whose beauteous face had been mutilated by the brutal clergy. Many superstitious practices were in the early days mingled with the operations of the surgeons, as well as of the physicians. History speaks of a man the muscles of whose legs were drawn up and contracted so as to defy all the skill of the surgeons, until an angel advised wheat flour to be boiled in milk, and the limb to be poulticed with it while warm; then all was well.

From the tenth to the twelfth century the practice of medicine and surgery, in England, was almost exclusively in the hands of the monks and clergy. So lucrative did they find it that many of the monks devoted themselves entirely to it, to the utter neglect of their religious duties. This the authorities of the church disapproved of, and made many attempts to restrain. At last, in 1163, it was enacted by the Council of Tours that no clergyman or monk should undertake any bloody operation. From that time |4| the clerics confined themselves to prescribing medicines, and the practice of surgery naturally fell into the hands of the barbers and smiths, who had previously been employed as assistants and dressers to the ecclesiastical operators.

The smiths soon found that most of the business was absorbed by the barbers: the latter kept little shops for cutting hair, shaving, bathing and curing the wounded, especially about the royal palaces and the houses of the great: the shops were marked by a striped pole and a basin, symbols that all the king's subjects might know where to apply in time of need; (the fillet around the pole indicating the ribbon for bandaging the arm in bleeding, and the basin the vessel to receive the blood). The barbers became so important that in 1461 the freemen of "The Mystery of Barbers, using the mystery or faculty of Surgery," obtained a charter from Edward IV., and were incorporated under the name of "The Company of Barbers in London," and none were allowed to practise save those admitted by the company. Although this charter was several times confirmed by subsequent kings, yet side by side with the regular barber-surgeons there grew up a body of men who practised pure surgery, and who actually formed a company, called "The Surgeons of London." In 1540, by Act of Parliament, these rival companies were united and named "The Masters, or Governors, of the Mystery and Commonalty of the Barbers and Surgeons of London."

The third section of this Act, after reciting that persons using the mystery of surgery oftentimes meddled and took into their cure and houses people infected with pestilence, great pox, and other contagious infirmities, and also used or exercised barbery, as washing, or shaving, or other feats thereto belonging, "which was very perilous for infecting the King's liege people resorting to their shops and houses and there being washed and shaven," enacted "that no |5| manner of person within the City of London, suburbs of the same and one mile compass of said City of London, after the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord God then next coming, using barbery or shaving, or that hereafter shall use barbery or shaving within the said city, etc., he nor they, nor none of them, to his, her, or their use, shall occupy any surgery, letting of blood, or any other thing belonging to surgery, drawing of teeth only excepted; and furthermore, in like manner, whosoever that useth the mystery or craft of surgery within the circuit aforesaid, as long as he shall fortune to use the said mystery or craft of surgery, shall in nowise occupy nor exercise the feat or craft of barbery or shaving, neither by himself, nor by one other for him, to his or their use; and moreover, that all manner of persons using surgery for the time being, as well freemen as foreigners, aliens and strangers within the circuit aforesaid, before the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, next coming, shall have an open sign on the street side where they shall fortune to dwell, that all the King's liege people there passing by may know at all times whither to resort for remedies in time of necessity (2)."

In 1745 this union of barbers and surgeons was dissolved; or, apparently, the surgeons ousting the barbers, received a new name and all the privileges of the old company, with the exclusive right to practise within London and for seven miles around. In 1800 the Surgeons' Company was called "The Royal College of Surgeons, in London;" and this, in 1843, was changed to that of "The Royal College of Surgeons of England."

In Scotland, at a very early day, the chirurgeons and barbers were united, and enjoyed many rights and privileges. In 1505 the "craftes of Surregeury and Barbouris" were |6| formed into a college or corporation, by the town council of Edinburgh, and became one of the fourteen incorporated trades of the city. George the Third erected this corporation into a Royal College, and now it is known as "The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh." In 1599, James VI., "to avoid the inconvenience caused by ignorant, unskilled, and unlearned persons, who, under the colour of chirurgeons, are in the habit of abusing the people to their pleasure, and of destroying thereby infinite numbers of his Majesty's subjects," incorporated the faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow; and gave them jurisdiction over the City of Glasgow and the adjoining counties. A recent Act of Parliament has very much shorn the privileges of this faculty (3).

In Ireland, the "Fraternity of Barbers and Chirurgeons of the Guild of S. Mary Magdalene" was incorporated by Henry II. The...