little they did read and served the community mainly as bearers of tales. After some years of activity as journeyman they could become masters by applying to the authorities, presenting certificates, and passing an examination before the physicians of the district. Prussia was the first country to appreciate the necessity of regulating medical practice, and the barbers and bathkeepers were placed under the control of the Medical College founded, in 1685, by Prince Frederick William. In 1724 this institution attained its greatest activity, having a subordinate school in each province. In 1725 King Frederick William issued a famous edict which did much to regulate medical affairs throughout the kingdom, and directed among other things that barbers and bathkeepers should "lead a religious, temperate, retired and sober life, in order to be at their best whenever their services were required." When their business was not sufficiently good they assumed other cares, as, for instance, one man was surgeon, municipal judge and post-master all at once. They were extremely envious of each other and often dabbled in medicine without permission. It was not until 1779 that the bathkeepers were permitted to rank in Prussia with the barbers, and were allowed to use more than four basins, the bathkeepers' guild being incorporated with that of the barber. There being no temptation to enter these ranks it is not strange that so late even as 1790 good surgeons were rare in Germany; not one in fifty of the barbers really knowing the first principles of the work they were supposed to perform. It came to such a pass that surgeons were compelled to shave and perform other duties of the hairdresser, for no surgeon, however skilled, was allowed to practice as such, unless he was the proprietor of a head-shaving and bathing establishment, with assistants and apprentices, and belonged to the barbers' guild, or unless he was favored by Royal exemption. It was the general lament in Germany, all through the 18th century, that German surgeons were educated in barber shops. Even by the middle of that century the practice of surgery was not considered an honorable business, and those who practiced it were not permitted to carry a sword, neither was a surgeon admitted into society nor tolerated among physicians; moreover when unsuccessful he was bitterly and relentlessly pursued. Under existing conditions the Reichstag either could or would do nothing to alleviate the distressing condition. The physician boasted of his education and treated the surgeon and his craft with disdain, holding that surgery sustained the same relation to medicine that geometry does to higher mathematics and physics. All this time, however, while the physician contented himself with disdaining surgeons he made no attempt to elevate the craft nor to himself study and adorn it. Even by the beginning of the nineteenth century there were scarcely