Their trade decaying, to keep swimming,
They join'd the other trade of trimming;
And to their poles, to publish either,
Thus twisted both their trades together."

From Brand's "History of Newcastle," we find that there was a branch of
the fraternity in that place; as at a meeting, 1742, of the
barber-chirurgeons, it was ordered, that they should not shave on a
Sunday, and "that no brother shave John Robinson, till he pay what he owes
to Robert Shafto." Speaking of the "grosse ignorance of the barbers," a
facetious author says, "This puts me in minde of a barber who, after he
had cupped me, (as the physitian had prescribed,) to turn a catarrhe,
asked me if I would be _sacrificed_. _Scarified_? said I; did
the physitian tell you any such thing? No, (quoth he,) but I have
sacrificed many, who have been the better for it. Then musing a little
with myselfe, I told him, Surely, sir, you mistake yourself--you meane
_scarified_. O, sir, by your favour, (quoth he,) I have ever heard it
called sacrificing; and as for scarifying, I never heard of it before. In
a word, I could by no means perswade him but that it was the barber's
office to _sacrifice_ men. Since which time I never saw any man in a
barber's hands, but that _sacrificing_ barber came to my
mind."--_Wadd's Nugæ_.

* * * * *

Sir Theodore Mayerne may be considered one of the earliest reformers of
the practice of physic. He left some papers written in elegant Latin, in
the Ashmolean Collection, which contain many curious particulars relative
to the first invention of several medicines, and the state of physic at
that period. Petitot, the celebrated enameller, owed his success in