University of Virginia Library

FROM PHYSICIAN TO BARBER

There is no reason to presume that in the early Middle
Ages bloodletting was performed by persons other than
trained physicians. Alcuin and Walahfrid Strabo refer to
the practice as being performed by medici.[406] But in the later
Middle Ages physicians considered this operation to be
beneath their dignity and conceded it to "barbers" and
"professional bleeders" (rasatores et sanguinatores).[407] In the
twelfth century this change must have been well under way.
A hint of the social milieu from which such secular bleeders
may have emerged and how and where they may have
received their training is found in the Chronicle of the
Abbey of St. Trond, where it is said of one of the monastery's
serfs, a recalcitrant oppidanus (inhabitant of a city)
named Arnulf, that in return for the terms of a tenement
granted to him by the abbey, he was not only to assist the
monks whenever they were bled, but in addition to provide
for the abbot's saddle and spurs, repair the abbey's window,
and perform other minor services, such as keeping all of
the monastery's locks in working condition.[408]