He was specially famous for his treatment of fistula, and he made his great reputation by curing Sir Adam Everyngham of this complaint after his case had been pronounced incurable by the chief doctors in France. Arderne had many distinguished patients and received very large fees. In his works he entered very fully into the history of his cases, and his mode of treatment, and when describing 'ye mannere of ye leche' he throws a remarkable light upon the professional ethics and habits of his time. He was by no means reticent as to the best means of getting over his patients and making them pay well. The surgeon is told to 'beware of scarse askings,' and as an example, Arderne says that, if he had to do with 'a worthy man and a great,' he charged 100 marks or £40 for a cure, 'with robez and feez of an hundred shillyns terme of lyfe, by year.' 'Of lesse men' he would take £40 or 40 marks without feez, but he adds 'never in alle my lyf toke I lesse than an hundred shillyns for cure of that sekeness.'
He counsels doctors to be careful in estimating the length of time of a cure, in fact to suggest double the time he expects. If the patient wonders at the rapidity of cure and asks, 'Why that he putte hym so long a tyme of curyng, sithe that he helyd hym by the halfe? Answere he, that it was for that the pacient was stony-herted and suffred wele sharpe thingis, and that he was of gode complexion, and hadde able fleshe to hale, and feyne he other causes pleasable to the pacient for pacientez of syche wordez are proude and delited.'
Arderne's instructions for the guidance of doctors are very sensible, and they help us to form a correct estimate of the manners of the public who were patients. Dr. Poore, after giving an analysis of the surgeon's work, writes: 'It is evident that John of Arderne was a consummate man of the world, and knew all the tricks of his trade. His fees seem to have been enormous, and indeed he is only one out of many examples among our early professional forerunners who made very large professional incomes.'[139]
Mr. Anderson, the biographer of Arderne, remarks that although he called himself 'Chirurgus inter Medicos,' 'there is nothing to show that he possessed a master's degree, or any formal license for the exercise of his calling.' Mr. Anderson adds, however, 'his writings prove that he was a man of clerkly attainments, with a good knowledge of Latin and French, and well read in the available literature of his profession, quoting freely from the works of the mediæval surgeons, the Arabs, and even from the Greeks.'