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SURGERY AND MIDWIFERY. 269
university, and to attend some lectures of the medical
faculty.
In the year 1416 the College de St. Come was incor­
porated as a separate faculty of the university of Paris. Its
pupils thus obtained a scientific education which was in no
way inferior to that of the physicians. In spite of this
they were not regarded as equal to them in social position.
This tendency to place the surgical profession in the
background, which was first apparent in Paris, originated
partly in the already-mentioned circumstance that the
clergy—who laid claim at that time to the highest position
in social life —kept themselves aloof from it, partly in the
fact that many uneducated people of the lower class were
associated with the surgeons, but above all was the result
of petty jealousies and quarrels with the medical faculty,
which asserted an unwarrantable claim to a superiority in
scientific attainments. The struggle between the physicians
and surgeons continued until the beginning of the 18th
century, and was prosecuted with a bitterness which
resulted in deplorable excesses on both sides. The medical
faculty of Paris in the year 1350 made it obligatory on its
members and students to abstain from the practice of surgery
and expelled those who contravened this prohibition*
Finding too little humility and subjection among the sur­
geons, the faculty in 1372 brought to effect their design of
giving barbers the right not only of letting blood but also of
practising all so-called minor surgery—of treating ulcers
and wounds, so long as they were not dangerous to life.
And, indeed, the want may have arisen of a class of
assistants to stand at the service of the physicians of that
time, for the purpose of performing those minor services of
surgery in almost daily request; for the specialists for
wounds who had technical training were few in number and
consequently much occupied. By these arrangements the
boundary between the surgeons and the barbers, at no time,
probably, insurmountable, was still further broken down.
* A. F. THERY : Histoire de l'education en France, Paris 1858.