If there had not been a curious assemblage of _materiel_, in an old Roman _tonstrina_, it would not have been selected as an object for the pencil. That it was so selected, however, appears from a passage in Pliny, XXXV. 37. He is writing of Pureicus--arte paucis postferendus: proposito, nescio an destruxerit se: quoniam humilia quidem sequutus, humilitatis tamen summam adeptus est gloriam. Tonstrinas, sutrinasque pinxit, et asellos, et obsonia, ac similia--He had few superiors in his art: I know not if the plan he adopted was fatal to his fame; for, though his subjects were humble, yet, in their representation, he attained the highest excellence. He painted barbers' and shoemakers' shops, asses, eatables, and the like.
A rude sketch of Heemskerck's picture of a barber's shop lies now upon my table. Here is the poodle, with a cape and fool's cap, walking on his hind legs--the suspended bleeding basin, and other et cætera of the profession.
Little is generally known, as to the origin and import of the barber's pole. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, surgery was in such low repute, that farriers, barbers, sow-spayers, and surgeons were much upon a level. The truth of this, in respect to surgeons and barbers, has been established by law: and, for about two hundred years, both in London and Paris, they were incorporated, as one company. I remember a case, reported by Espinasse--not having the book at hand, I cannot indicate the volume and page--which shows the judicial estimate of surgery then, compared with the practice of physic. A physician's fees, in England, were accounted _quiddam honorarium_, and not _matter of lucre_, and therefore could not be recovered, in an action at law. Upon an action brought for surgical services, the fees were recoverable, because surgeons, upon the testimony of Dr. Mead, were of a lower grade, having nothing to do with the pathology of diseases, and never prescribing; but simply performing certain mechanical acts; and being, like all other artificers and operatives, worthy of their hire.
Nothing can more clearly exhibit the low state of this noble science, at the time, and the humble estimation of it, by the public. Chirurgery seemed destined to grovel, in etymological bondage, [Greek: cheir ergon], a mere _handicraft_. Barbers and surgeons were incorporated, as one company, in the fifteenth century, in the reign of Edward IV., and were called barber-surgeons. At the close of the sixteenth century, Ambrose Paré, the greatest surgeon of his time in France, did not reject the appellation of _barber-surgeon_. Henry VIII. dissolved this union, and gave a new charter in 1540, when it was enacted, that "_no person, using any shaving or barbery in London, shall occupy any surgery, letting of blood, or other matter, excepting only the drawing of teeth_." The _barber-surgeon_ was thus reduced to the _barber-dentist_, which seems not so agreeable to the practitioner, at present, as the loftier appellation of _surgeon-dentist_. Sterne was right: there is something in a name. The British surgeons obtained a new charter, in 1745, and another, in 1800, and various acts have been subsequently passed, on their behalf. July 17, 1797, Lord Thurlow, in the House of Peers, opposed a new bill, which the surgeons desired to have passed. Thurlow was a man of morose temperament, and uncertain humor.