The beginnings of the literary renaissance of surgery in England / by Sir D'Arcy Power, K.B.E., F.R.C.S.

  • Power, D'Arcy, Sir, 1855-1941
Date:
[1928?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The beginnings of the literary renaissance of surgery in England / by Sir D'Arcy Power, K.B.E., F.R.C.S. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Section of tbe 1btstor\> of ADeMdne. President—Dr. Herbert R. Spencer. [October 3, 1928.] The Beginnings of the Literary Renaissance of Surgery in England. By Sir D’Arcy Power, K.B.E., F.R.C.S. The Wars of tbe Roses so troubled England during the fifteenth century that surgery became little more than a handicraft and there is no surgical literature. The process of reconstruction occupied the first half of the sixteenth century and began with an attempt to unite the Fellowship of Surgeons with the Company of Barbers. The former body, impoverished and small in numbers, represented the Consulting Surgeons of to-day—men who had served their apprenticeship in war and found their occupation gone when peace came ; the latter, numerous and rich, were the general practitioners of the day, and had obtained a Charter as a Livery Company of the City of London. They performed their duties well, but were commercially-minded and had no wish to ally themselves with impoverished surgeons who were, perhaps, more highly skilled in their science and had certainly seen more of the world ; the very wideness of their outlook might make them inconvenient partners for they would be sure to advocate radical changes in a business which was doing well on the old lines. Better counsels prevailed and relationships changed during the next forty years under men like George Keble, to whom Clowes was apprenticed, Thomas Yicary, Richard Ferris, Sir John Aylef, James Monford and Robert Balthrop. The Surgeons and the Barbers were united into one Body Corporate in 1540, and the revival of Surgery as a profession began at once. The revival proceeded along two main lines, the one administrative, the other literary. It is with the literary side alone that I am concerned to-day. The cry of the surgical reformers on the literary side was “ Back to the Fathers.” This same cry was used again in the*early nineteenth century when, at the beginning of the Oxford movement, Newman set himself to read and to publish a new edition of St. Ignatius and St. Justin, urging his pupils to follow his example. So, after the Union of the Barbers and Surgeons the leaders of thought began to make a new surgical literature. Some, like Yicary, published without comment the writings of more than a hundred and fifty years earlier; others, like Hall, compared several manuscripts and published a revised version of his author ; others again, like Read, Hall’s son-in-law, issued an old writer with comments, or printed an unpublished manuscript. Read went further and obtained a translation of parts of the surgery written by Francis Arcaeus (1493-1574), then a modern surgeon; in this he followed the good example of Richard Jonas, who translated and printed Rosslin’s Bosengarten from the De partu hominis. The way being thus prepared, Gale, Clowes and others wrote their own experiences in the form of text-books and monographs which are the foundations of English surgical literature. The first known edition of Yicary’s book is a duodecimo published by Henry Bamforde in 1577. It is called The Englishman’s Treasure, and was issued posthumously, for Yicary died late in 1561 or early in 1562. There must, however, have been an earlier edition, for John Hall says in his Treatise on Anatomy (published in 1565) that he was following— “ the example of good Maister Vicarie, late Sargeante chyrurgien to the queenes highness ; who was the first that euer wrote a treatyse of Anatomye in English (to the profite of his brethren chirurgiens and the helpe of young studientes) as farre as I can learne.” The book ran through many editions between 1577 and 1651, being reprinted on each occasion without change. In 1888 it was edited with notes by Dr. Furnivall and Mr. Percy Furnivall and appeared as an extra volume of the Early English Nov.—Hist, op Med. 1