For hundreds of years the monks were not allowed to wear a beard; this necessitated the employment of tonsors ("tonsorial-artists" they call themselves to-day) to whom was left also the performance of anything that partook of the nature of an operation, such as bleeding, bandaging, etc. This calling, was however, recognized as a most inferior one, and the barbers, like the bathkeeper, the shepherd and the hangman, were not considered of good repute. Consequently, such an one was not eligible for membership in any other guilds or fraternities. In 1406 the Emperor Wenzel was rescued from prison, in Prague, by the daughter of a bathkeeper; in gratitude he made her his mistress, and declared both barbers and bathkeepers to be respectable; but having lost his position his decree had no weight, and not until 1548, in Augsburg, were they really made eligible to the guilds. At this time their most dignified labor was the sharpening of instruments. In 1696 Leopold I. decreed their profession to be an art, and gave it a position above that of the apothecary so that in their most dignified occupation they were elevated to the making of ointments and plasters. As surgery has for the profession of barber surgery to thank the existence upon man of a beard, so the European continent may thank the Crusaders of the eleventh century for having necessitated the existence of the bathkeeper, because of the leprosy which they brought home from the East. During the Crusades, as is well known, there were founded numerous Orders having for their original purpose the care and protection of pilgrims and injured soldiers. The three most celebrated Orders were the Knights of St. John, the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Order. Were this the place it would be most interesting to go into a history of these religio-medico-military Orders, and show how from most devout purposes and humble origin they grew into despotic and tyrannical associations of great power, which it finally took all the force of Church and State to suppress. As the then humble and enthusiastic members of these Orders returned from the Holy Land they established hospitals for the care of lepers, who became very numerous in Europe. For instance it is stated that in France, in 1225, there were two thousand hospitals for this purpose, while the King Louis the Great founded, in 1260, a special hospital for those made blind by Egyptian ophthalmia. It is well known also that during the middle ages there was the greatest neglect of the ordinary canons of cleanliness both among the upper and lower classes. The number of hospitals and cloisters dedicated to the lepers being insufficient, bath houses were built and bathkeepers were engaged in order, so far as possible, to prevent the spread of leprosy. At this time the bathkeeper was permitted to bathe and cup, later also to bleed, although the bleeding was required to be done in the bathkeepers' own house, since he was