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“Half-Gods, Good Surgeons May Be Called”: Surgery's “HALF-GODS, GOOD SURGEONS MAY BE CALLED”: SURGERY’S QUEST FOR OCCUPATIONAL CREDIT IN ENGLAND, 1590-1715 by Samantha Sandassie A thesis submitted to the Department of History In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (September, 2014) Copyright ©Samantha Sandassie, 2014 Abstract This study contributes to the scholarship on early modern medicine and the professions by examining English surgical practitioners, 1590-1715. It explores the growth of surgery through the intersection of print culture and institutional history and delineates the manner in which surgical practitioners worked with, and within, their changing socio-cultural context to gain social and occupational credit. Bringing together published treatises and manuscript sources such as practitioner casebooks, institutional records of the Company of Barbers and Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians, it argues that surgical practitioners sought actively to create new social and occupational identities based on that of physicians. The project reveals that surgical practitioners underwent a theoretical and experiential education that reflected an understanding of “surgery” beyond incision, extirpation, and suturing. Practitioners took to print to present themselves as learned; they took advantage of the new emphasis on empirical ways of knowing and stressed that their knowledge acquisition – unlike that of physicians – was both theoretical and practical. Print however, was also used to reify a largely negative view of surgeons and surgery. Popular health treatises presented surgery as painful, invasive, and to be avoided at all costs while, in fiction, surgeons were ill-educated and merely aping the physician’s vocabulary and gentlemanly conduct. The latter observation echoes mockingly surgeons’ self-creation in both print and institution. As the seventeenth century progressed, the Company of Barbers and Surgeons acted increasingly to shape the occupational identity of surgeons as separate from barbers ii and more closely related to physicians. The institution battled to be recognized as an organized body whose members were competent medical practitioners. Individual practitioners sought to showcase their adherence to the new science as a method of knowledge creation and testing, seizing upon the Royal Society to further their aims. Through both this institutional mechanism and informal patronage relationships, surgeons could ingratiate themselves with those who could provide both positions and patients. Combined, these findings hold implications for the history of surgery and the occupation’s advancement – especially in terms of “horizontal honour” – during a period that lacked significant innovation in terms of technique or even improved quality of care. iii Acknowledgements “I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.” - Benjamin Disraeli This project could not have been completed without the encouragement and support of countless people. The debt of gratitude I owe is such that can hardly be repaid. Research for this study was funded through the generosity of Queen’s University and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. At Queen’s, the history department faculty and staff have been invaluable resources. My students, too, have taught me much. Many thanks are especially due to the repositories who kindly allowed access to the documents cited herein: the British Library, Guildhall Library, London Metropolitan Archives, Queen’s libraries, The National Archives, Royal College of Physicians Libraries and Archives, Wellcome Library, and the Worshipful Company of Barbers. To Barbers’ Company archivists Joy Thomas and Kathryn Rooke I owe especial thanks. Ms. Thomas provided significant aid during my first research trip and Ms. Rooke generously supplied the photographs of Company-owned portraits. To Jim Alsop I owe the first-fruits of my academic endeavours. Thank you for saving me from law school and introducing me to the world of early modern medicine. Thank you to committee members Matthew Neufeld, Elizabeth Hanson, Ishita Pande, Daniel Woolf, and Jeff Collins for their thoughtful and insightful comments and critiques. Throughout the PhD process I have benefited immensely from the guidance of Drs. Woolf and Collins. Dr. Collins, thank you for your wisdom – I could not have asked for a better supervisor. My friends and colleagues at Queen’s are invaluable. Marisha Caswell, Mary Chaktsiris, Patrick Corbeil, Rob Engen, Carolyn Harris, Claire Cookson-Hills, Maria Moncur, Pamela Peacock, Peter Price, Reeju Ray, Rebecca Slitt, Murph Trudgen, Allison Ward, and Sarah Waurechen have kept me fed, watered, and entertained. You have answered my teaching questions, been the very best of officemates, and listened to me blather on about surgical procedures over many a meal. Without you my years in Kingston would have been intolerable. Deanna & Minh, Kat & Aleks, Paul, and Atticus – it is an honour to have you in my life: audeamus. My parents and siblings have, likewise, provided immense support over the years. Without you I would never have dared to dream: ad altiora tendo. My husband Nathan has been an unfaltering foundation – a safe harbour in times of storm: cor unum, amas ergo sum. iv Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents...............................................................................................................iv List of Figures.................................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1 Introduction: “Half-gods, Good Surgons May be Cald”.................................... 1 Chapter 2 "No Man Becomes a Workeman by Booke": The Barber-Surgeons' Company and Surgical Training........................................................................................................ 28 Chapter 3 “Monuments…to Posterity”?: Surgical Practitioners and Print....................... 67 Chapter 4 Surgical Knowledge, Print, and the Lay Population ...................................... 110 Chapter 5 Send for the Surgeon: Representations of Surgery and Surgeons in Early Modern English Fiction .................................................................................................. 153 Chapter 6 The Quest for Collective Occupational Credit............................................... 190 Chapter 7 The Intersection of Institution and Print ........................................................ 232 Chapter 8 Patronage, Petitions, and Surgical Occupational Development..................... 261 Chapter 9 Conclusions .................................................................................................... 294 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 303 v List of Figures Figure 1: All books published in London vs. Surgical publications from 1590-1700...... 73 Figure 2: Treatises written for a practitioner audience vs. total number of surgical publications....................................................................................................................... 78 Figure 3: Frontispiece of Guillemeau’s The Frenche Chirurgerye, 1598 English translation.......................................................................................................................... 95 Figure 4: Frontispiece to Paré’s The Workes, 1634 English translation........................... 96 Figure 5: Frontispiece of Woodall’s The Surgeons Mate (1639) ..................................... 99 Figure 6: Frontispiece of Thomas Brugis’ Vade Mecum (1651) .................................... 100 Figure 7: Woodall’s Instruments, The Surgeons Mate (1639) ....................................... 103 Figure 8: Clowes’s Wound Man & Surgeons’s Chest.................................................... 106 Figure 9: Scultetus’s directions for trepanning (Left), Le Clerc’s bandages (Top Right) and Belloste’s plate (Bottom Right) ............................................................................... 107 Figure 10: Title page of Salvator Winter’s A Pretious Treasury (1649) ........................ 135 Figure 11: Cornelius Tilburg treating a man’s eye complaint from his In Bruges Street, London (between 1695-1700)......................................................................................... 138 Figure 12: Bartlett, Bartlett, at the Golden Ball, London, 1660? (L) and Bartlett’s truss in use Ruptures cur[‘d] by Bartlett of Goodmans-[Fiel]ds, London, 1660 (R) ................. 139 Figure 13: The first page of John Russell’s Professor of Physick and Oculist, London, 1680?............................................................................................................................... 140 Figure 14: Coat of Arms of the Company of Barbers and Surgeons (c. 1635)............... 198 Figure 15: Portrait of surgeon Ephraim Skinner in full livery........................................ 209 Figure 16: Dr. Scarborough (L) and Edward Arris (R). ................................................. 229 vi Chapter 1 Introduction: “Half-gods, Good Surgons May be Cald” In 1677, the famed diarist Samuel Pepys wrote that he could not recall
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