care providers in the sixteenth– seventeenth century Michel Deruyttere
The different groups of health professionals were increasingly structured in the sixteenth and certainly in the seventeenth century, and their training became progressively more sophisticated. Barbers and surgeons belonged to the ‘Beardmakers’ guild; they were citizens of Bruges, craftsmen and artisans. Their charter – drawn up between 1507 and 1607 – comprised 49 ‘points and articles’, setting out the rules and guidelines for membership, function and ethics. The parchment roll is nowadays preserved at the Rijksarchief in Bruges. The surgeons were united religiously in the Guild of Saints Cosmas and Damian. Their guild chapel was in SintJakobskerk, where their patron saints can still be admired in the painting they commissioned from Lanceloot Blondeel. Unlike the physicians, surgeons did not know Latin and they learned their trade as apprenti-
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ces to an established master. They focused exclusively on the ‘outside’ of the body, their work consisting chiefly of the treatment of wounds and abscesses, bleeding on the instruction of a physician, splinting fractures and, if necessary, amputation. Skilful barbers would not only cut their customer’s hair and shave their beards, they also offered to bleed them. The surgeons formed their guild, the ‘Neringhe der Chirurgijns’, in the seventeenth century, publishing their charter – which can also be found in the Rijksarchief – around 1665. They met at the ‘School voor Chirurgie’ in Het Steen on Burg square, where would-be surgeons were also trained. It was for the latters’ benefit that Jan Pelsers wrote his popularizing Examen chirurgorum in 1565. The treatise, which can now be seen at the Biekorf in Bruges, was subtitled ‘clear education, plainly written and unadorned,
for surgeons and barbers’. In 1569, the Bruges printer Pieter de Clerck published Dat epitome
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