A Good Old-Fashioned Barber

In last week’s post I looked at the handy medieval medical guide for aligning bodily weaknesses with astrological influences as represented in “Zodiac Man”. The “Wound Man” served a similar purpose in that he was a visual compendium for the sorts of traumatic injuries that medieval surgeons might have to treat.

The medieval surgeon was not, of course, anything like the surgeon of our modern world. In fact, the medieval surgeon was often the local barber because one of the main criterion for “entry” to the profession was to be good with a knife or other blade. A barber had ready access, too, to these blades and plenty of practice and skill in using them on the human body.

The barbers’ poles of today, with their red and white intermingling spirals, are direct reminders of the dual skills of the barber of previous days. Originally the red represented the blood that the barber would draw from the patient either as a direct result of the surgery or as a deliberate outcome of bloodletting. This was a common medieval practice which involved the cutting open of a vein to allow the release of what was regarded as “excess blood” in the bodily humours. The pole’s white-coloured spirals, then, stood for the bandages that were applied to stem the wound at the conclusion of the “treatment”.

In the days before anaesthetic, surgery required a steady hand and it was not unusual that the surgeon was a woman. Her more delicate hands made the removal of anything from haemorrhoids to cataracts seem a little more bearable to the hapless patient.

Something to think about next time you’re at the hairdresser.