A medical and surgical service was organized at the Hotel Dieu, which hospital was erected before the entrance of Notre Dame, under the direction of the clergy. On certain days the priests would assemble around the holy water font of the cathedral, _supra cupam_, in order to discuss questions in medicine or the connection of scholastic learning with the healing art. The University only recognized as students of medicine persons who held the degree of master-in-arts. They absolutely separated the _meges_ and _mires_, surgeons, bonesetters, and barbers, who had made no classical studies, and to whom was abandoned as unworthy of the real physicians all that concerned minor surgery. These officers of health, so-called, of the Middle Ages were unimportant and little respected persons; they kept shops and never went out without carrying one or two dressing cases; they were only comparable to drug peddlers; and the University imposed no vows of celibacy in their case. In many literary works in Latin it is often a question whether to call in a physician or _mire_, and certain passages admirably serve to prove this historical fact. In the _Roman de Dolopatos_,[2] for example, the poet tells how to prevent the poisoning of wounds, as they are easy to cure when the injury is recent: You have heard it told To dress a wound while new; ’Tis hard to heal when old. You’ll find this statement true.[3] When the doctor cometh late The wound may poisoned be; The sore may irritate And most sad results we see. In another troubadour song, _The Wicked Surgeon_ (_Vilain Mire_), from which Moliere purloined his play “A Doctor in Spite of Himself,” we see the wife of the bone-setter assure every one that her husband is not only a good surgeon, but likewise knows as much of medicine and uroscopy as Hippocrates himself. (We must not forget that a knowledge of urine was claimed by _mires_ and _meges_.) Thus the bone setter’s wife says: “My husband is, as I have said, A surgeon who can raise the dead. He sees disease in urine hid, Knows more than e’en Ypocras did.” The _Roman de la Rose_ shows us a poor devil who complains of not being able to find a surgeon (_mire_) to dress his wounds, _i.e._: “Ne sceus que faire, ne que dire, Ne pour ma playe trover mire, Ne par herbe, ne par racine Je ne peus trover medecine.”