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Lynda's Barber Shop
Especially during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, hair certainly was not the only thing that barbers cut! They were called "barber-surgeons" – and besides grooming clients in the coifs of the day, they performed surgeries such as tooth extractions, setting broken bones, cupping, and bloodletting. In England, barbers were chartered as a guild by Edward IV in 1462 as the Company of Barbers, and in 1540 King Henry VIII signed a decree that merged barbers and surgeons into the United Barber-Surgeons Company. French authorities differentiated academic surgeons, Surgeons of the Long Robe, from barber-surgeons, Surgeons of the Short Robe. Barber-surgeons, highly trained and as well respected as academic surgeons (Ambroise Paré, the great 16th-century French army surgeon and the chief surgeon to both Charles IX and Henri III, began his illustrious career as an itinerant barber-surgeon), were organized as their own guild in 1391 and even admitted to the faculty of the University of Paris in 1505. After formation of the United Barber-Surgeons Company in England, a statute required barbers to use a blue and white pole and surgeons to use a red and white pole. In France, Surgeons of the Long Robe displayed a red pole with a basin attached to identify their offices. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the barber pole was the symbol of the barber-surgeon's arcane services of bloodletting and leeching. Some of the simple instruments necessary for his gruesome procedures were a staff or rod for the unfortunate patient to tightly grasp, allowing the veins of the arm to expand for a more accurate razor blade cut, perforator aim, or leech application; a basin containing leeches; a bowl to collect the flowing blood (made more profuse by the leeches' anticoagulant); and lots of linen bandages (new and used!). Blowing in the wind upon the barber pole, washed bandages were hung out to dry – coincidentally and vividly promoting the bloody therapeutic specialties offered therein – and then twisted around the pole for easy access and convenient storage (usually near the door). The early barber pole was a simple wood post, topped by a brass leech basin, which in time was replaced with the more recognized ball on the modern pole. Later, the pole was painted with red and white spiraling stripes (representing the blood and bandages); it became a permanent outdoor fixture and was no longer used to hold bandages. Blue was not a color used in the barber pole of early times – but later, the updated color combination was adopted with red representing blood, blue representing veins, and white representing bandages. This three-color pole is the one more widely displayed by today's (non-bloodletting) barber-stylists. [ Home | Barber Jokes | Employment Opportunity ] |