From Haircuts to Hangnails – The Barber-Surgeon

magine your monthly beauty routine. Perhaps you go to the salon and get a manicure and pedicure, or to the hairstylist for a cut and dye. Every six months you go to a dentist to have your teeth cleaned and examined, and to the doctor once a year for your physical exam. Three hundred years ago, your routine would have been much the same, except for one thing. It would all have been done at the barbershop.

Barbers in the modern period are known to do mainly one thing: cut hair. For much of the last hundred and fifty years, their red and white striped barber poles signified their ability to produce a good clean shave and a quick trim. This was not always the case, however.

Up until the 19th century barbers were generally referred to as barber-surgeons, and they were called upon to perform a wide variety of tasks. They treated and extracted teeth, branded slaves, created ritual tattoos or scars, cut out gallstones and hangnails, set fractures, gave enemas, and lanced abscesses. Whereas physicians of their age examined urine or studied the stars to determine a patient’s diagnosis, barber-surgeons experienced their patients up close and personal. Many patients would go to their local barber for semi-annual bloodletting, much like you take your car in for a periodic oil change.

Barbers through the Ages

Beginning in the Egyptian era, throughout Roman times and in the Middle Ages, barbers were known to perform much more than simple haircuts and efforts of vanity. They were called on to perform minor surgical operations, pull teeth, and embalm the dead. Their many duties made them the surgeons of the day.

The barbering occupation began in ancient Egypt, where both men and women shaved their heads and wore wigs, and higher-ranking officials often shaved their entire bodies. Egypt’s wealthy citizens and royalty were often tended to by personal slaves, who dressed their wigs, cleaned, and shaved their bodies. Gradually a working class of independent barbers developed, who would perform these duties for all members of society. Personal barbers would also perform additional duties, such as cleaning ears and examining teeth.

The Greeks, in their heyday, wore long hair and curled beards, which required much tending. Alexander the Great, fearing that enemies would use long hair as handles in battle, encouraged his men to cut their hair and shave their beards, which required a skilled set of haircutters. These expert Greek barbers spread along with the widening influence of the Greek state, eventually entering Roman territory, where they set up stalls in the city streets.

Many settled communities around the world also employed a set of skilled barber-surgeons. Cortez encountered barbers upon entering Tenochtitlan; European colonists relied on the surgical abilities of the newfound Indian populations in American colonies; and Chinese traveling barbers wandered through the streets, ringing a bell to announce their presence. Because barbers employed an array of sharp metal tools, and they were more affordable than the local physician, they were often called upon to perform a wide range of surgical tasks.

Barbers differed greatly from the medicine man or shaman, who used magic or religion to heal their patients. Surgery was considered a “lesser art,” and was not to be performed by the magical preist-physicians that ruled the mystical connection between the soul and the body. But this did not diminish their presence or usefulness.

In the ancient Mayan civilization, they were called upon to create ritual tattoos and scars. The ancient Chinese used them to castrate eunuchs. They gelded animals and assisted midwives, and performed circumcisions. Their accessibility and skill with precise instruments often made them the obvious choice for surgical procedures.