This will be perhaps as good a place as any to emphasize the fact that the clergy, having so long monopolized all learning and teaching, and having, at the same time, an abhorrence for the shedding of blood, which indeed had been prohibited by many papal bulls and royal edicts, permitted the practice of the operative part of medicine--i. e., surgery--to fall into the hands of the most illiterate and incompetent men. Inasmuch as the Church prohibited the wearing of beards, and as many of the religious orders also shaved their heads, there were attached to every monastery and to every religious order a number of barbers, whose duty was to take care of the clergy in these respects. Thus into their hands was gradually committed the performance of any minor operation which involved the letting of blood, and from this, as a beginning, it came about that no really educated man concerned himself with the operations of surgery, but left them entirely to the illiterate servants of the Church. This is really the reason that the barbers for many centuries did nearly all the surgery, and why, at the same time, surgery fell into such general and wide-spread disrepute. From this it was only revived about one hundred years ago. Did time permit, this would be a most appropriate place to digress from the subject of this paper and rehearse to you the various stages in the evolution of the surgeon from the barber; but time does not permit it, and it constitutes a chapter in history by itself, which must be relegated to some other occasion. (See p. 296). It was about the beginning of the fifteenth century that the better class of physicians began to belong to the laity, and were called "physici" in contrast to the "clerici." Later they were known as "doctores." Until the fourteenth century most of them studied in Italian or French universities, the Germans even being compelled to go to these foreign institutions. In Paris they were required to take an oath that they would not join the surgeons. This regulation was founded as much upon spite and envy as upon any other motive. Many of the clerical physicians belonged to the lower class, and were so ignorant that even the Church itself was forced to declare many of their successes miracles. Although monks and the clergy in general had been frequently forbidden to practice medicine, the decrees to this effect were quite generally disregarded, except in the matter of surgical operations. In the ranks of the higher clergy it must be said that well-educated physicians were occasionally found. There is, for instance, the record of a certain bishop of Basel, who was deputed to seek from Pope Clement V. an archbishopric for another person, but finding the Pope seriously ill, cured him, and received for himself in return the electorate of Mayence, which was perhaps one of the largest honorariums ever given to a physician.