Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York
- 2 The Manuscript and the Civic Context
- 3 The Medieval Core: Calendar, Images and Charts
- 4 The Medieval Core: Texts
- 5 The Early Modern Use of the Book
- Conclusion
- Plate Section
- Edition of the Guild Book
- Appendix 1 Description of the Manuscript
- Appendix 2 Collations
- Appendix 3 Analysis of Parchment Folios
- Appendix 4 Analysis of Paper Folios
- Appendix 5 Witness to the Bloodletting Poem
- Appendix 6 Names Entered into the Guild Book
- Bibliography
- Index
- Health and Healing in the Middle Ages
2 - The Manuscript and the Civic Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York
- 2 The Manuscript and the Civic Context
- 3 The Medieval Core: Calendar, Images and Charts
- 4 The Medieval Core: Texts
- 5 The Early Modern Use of the Book
- Conclusion
- Plate Section
- Edition of the Guild Book
- Appendix 1 Description of the Manuscript
- Appendix 2 Collations
- Appendix 3 Analysis of Parchment Folios
- Appendix 4 Analysis of Paper Folios
- Appendix 5 Witness to the Bloodletting Poem
- Appendix 6 Names Entered into the Guild Book
- Bibliography
- Index
- Health and Healing in the Middle Ages
Summary
The Guild and the City
Documentary evidence for York's medieval medical practitioners is limited and scattered amongst various city records. The City Council's ordinances of 1301 refer to medical services, and the entry for physicians and doctors is quoted here in full:
No physician shall be called to that profession unless he is expert in the art of medicine, and he is to be sworn to exercise his calling well and faithfully. He shall use only good, pure and clean drugs. No doctor is to exercise his profession unless he had been instructed in the art of surgery at least so as to treat wounds and hurts. He is to swear not to treat anyone for any wound unless he first informs the mayor of where the wounded man lodges, and of the nature of the wound. Doctors are to be prevented from treating hurts and other privy ailments if they do not do this. No practitioner is to buy old bandages, save in open market and by view of his neighbours. They are to be sworn that if they find any old bandages for sale which are ripped or bloodstained, they are at once to take the vendor and bring him before the bailiffs. If any doctor or practitioner does otherwise, he is to be taken just like a felon, murderer or red-handed thief, and sent to prison at the king's will. The names of physicians, doctors and practitioners are to be enrolled.
The subsequent entry in the Ordinances refers to the practice of apothecaries, including the instruction that one was not ‘to make concoctions for human use as medicine unless he knows his calling well’. A medicine found to have been made incorrectly ‘is to be burned, and [the apothecary] shall abjure his call forever’.
The Ordinances were instituted by Edward I as he established York as a staging post for his military campaign into Scotland. Made with the full agreement of the civic authorities, they were intended to improve the sanitary conditions in the city. The insistence that physicians and doctors should have received appropriate instruction before treating patients is to be expected. Yet beyond this, there is a focus on ensuring violent attacks did not pass unrecognised and unpunished.
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- Information
- The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York (British Library, Egerton MS 2572)Study and Edition, pp. 22 - 34Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021