The history of the Surgeons' Company, 1745-1800 / by Cecil Wall ; with a foreword by Sir D'Arcy Power. With frontispiece and 9 other illustrations.

  • Wall, Cecil, 1869-1947.
Date:
[1937]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the Surgeons' Company, 1745-1800 / by Cecil Wall ; with a foreword by Sir D'Arcy Power. With frontispiece and 9 other illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    FOREWORD There are several reasons for congratulating Dr. Cecil Wall on this account of the Surgeons* Company. In the first place he has done a service to the history of Surgery in London. The early and modern periods are fairly well known, the Georgian era has remained almost unexplored. Dr. Cecil Wall has thrown much light upon it by going to original sources for his information and as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Archivist to the Society of Apothecaries he has had access to additional documents. The result of his work has been to show that London surgeons have remained true to type, excellent craftsmen but shockingly bad at business. They appear at first as members of a profession unable to combine in their own interest and collectively penniless. The Barbers who did not profess to be more than tradesmen and were the general practitioners of the time were well-to-do and had become a powerful corporate body. They allowed the surgeons to join them and for two hundred years the United