"Besides the former rules for such as pleases Of letting bloud to take more observation; . . . . . To old, to young, both letting blood displeases. By yeares and sickness make your computation. First in the spring for quantity you shall Of bloud take twice as much as in the fall; In spring and summer let the right arme bloud, The fall and winter for the left are good." Wadd mentions an old surgical writer who divides his chapter on bleeding under such heads as the following:--1. What is to limit bleeding? 2. Qualities of an able phlebotomist; 3. Of the choice of instruments; 4. Of the band and bolster; 5. Of porringers; 6. _Circumstances to be considered at the bleeding of a Prince._ Simon Harward's "Phlebotomy, or Treatise of Letting of Bloud; fitly serving, as well for an advertisement and remembrance to all well-minded chirurgians, as well also to give a caveat generally to all men to beware of the manifold dangers which may ensue upon rash and unadvised letting of bloud," published in the year 1601, contains much interesting matter on the subject of which it treats. But a yet more amusing work is one that Nicholas Gyer wrote and published in 1592, under the following title:-- "The English Phlebotomy; or, Method and Way of Healing by Letting of Bloud." On the title-page is a motto taken from the book of Proverbs--"The horse-leach hath two daughters, which crye, 'give, give.'" [Illustration: _THE FOUNDERS OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON_] The work affords some valuable insight into the social status of the profession in the sixteenth century. In his dedicatory letter to Master Reginald Scot, Esquire, the author says that phlebotomy "is greatly abused by vagabund horse-leaches and travailing tinkers, who find work almost in every village through whom it comes (having in truth neither knowledge, nor witte, nor honesty), the sober practitioner and cunning chirurgian liveth basely, is despised, and accounted a very abject amongst the vulgar sort." Of the medical skill of Sir Thomas Eliot, and Drs. Bulleyn, Turner, Penié, and Coldwel, the author speaks in terms of warm eulogy; but as for the tinkers aforementioned, he would regard them as murderers, and "truss them up at Tyborne." Gyer, who indulges in continual reference to the "Schola Salerni," makes the following contribution to the printed metrical literature on Venesection:-- "_Certaine very old English verses, concerning the veines and letting of bloud, taken out of a very auncient paper book of Phisicke notes_:--