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TEACHING IN SURGERY. 421
subordination of surgery to medicine had existed from all
time and was necessary and natural: it even went so, far.
as to make the absurd assertion that the possession of a
higher general education is detrimental to surgeons ; but
all in vain. The surgeons maintained the independence
they had struggled after for centuries, and their deeds
proved that they were worthy of it. Only the elite of the
surgeons received their technical training at the Surgical
Academy of Paris; the majority learned surgery like a
handicraft with a master, getting the necessary practice
and skill by frequenting, and acting as surgical practitioners
in, the hospitals. A regulation was made that no
master should have more than one pupil, so that he might be
in a position to devote sufficient attention to his training.
In towns where several surgeons were practising they
formed societies, took duty in the hospitals by turns, and
furthered the instruction of their pupils by means of lectures
and practical demonstrations in anatomy and surgery. At
the beginning of every year each surgical guild submitted
a list of its masters to the Royal body-surgeon who stood
at the head of the surgeons of France.*
In England and Holland the system of higher surgical
education lay entirely in the hands of the surgeons' guilds,
which at a very early period in these countries appeared
as exclusive corporations with defined privileges. Although
CROMWELL in 1656 empowered the College of Physicians
in Edinburgh to deal with surgery because it was simply a
branch of medicine, this arrangement only lasted for a short
time.t The societies of surgeons in London, Edinburgh,
Dublin, Amsterdam, at the Hague and elsewhere, arranged
courses of instruction for students of surgery and took care
that they were able to get a practical education in anatomy
and surgery. JOHN KAY was summoned to London in the
time of HENRY VIII. to instruct surgeons in the performance
* G. FISCHER : Chirurgie vor hundert Jahren, Leipzig 1876, S. 254 et seq.
f Historical Sketch of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Edin­
burgh 1882.