In the thirteenth century faculties were established at Montpellier, Salerno, and Paris, by the order of papal bulls, to grant degrees in medicine. In order to obtain the title of master physician, the candidate had first to become a clerk, then pass an examination before masters or doctors selected from the staff of the college by the Bishop of Maguelonne. The barbers at this time came to occupy an important position in medicine, and were promoted to the rank of subordinate surgeons, chiefly for blood-letting and minor accidents. In the fourteenth century medicine had rapidly progressed in Europe, and the celebrated physician and surgeon Lanfranc founded the St. Cosmo College at Paris, the examinations of which all surgeons were obliged to pass. A decree was also passed by the King of France in 1352 prohibiting any one who was not an apothecary, student, or mendicant monk from practising medicine. The king, we find, also exempted the master barbers from doing duty as watchmen, as “the barbers being nearly all of them in the habit of practising surgery, great inconvenience might arise if they were absent from their houses when sent for during the night”. In France, the little barbers, as they were called, travelled about on foot from village to village with a bag containing their drugs and remedies, while the great barbers, or sworn surgeons, astride their hacks with tinkling bells to announce their approach, wore long robes trimmed with fur, and other rich apparel. They were usually accompanied by an assistant and several servants, who carried their cases of instruments, which always included scissors, nippers, a probe or _éprouvette_, razors, lances, and needles. He also carried five kinds of ointments, _viz._, basilicon, apostles’ ointment, the white ointment, yellow ointment, and the dialtœa ointment for subduing local pain. Guy de Chauliac, who was physician to three successive popes, stated “he never went out on his visits without taking several clysters and plain remedies, besides gathering herbs in the field, so as to treat diseases in a proper manner”. Even at that early time the credulity of the public became imposed upon by quacks, and Lacroix tells us of an English surgeon, one Goddesden, who had two sorts of prescriptions, one for the rich and another for the poor; he sold at a high price to the barbers a so-called panacea, which the latter sold at a large profit, and this was simply a mixture of frogs pounded in a mortar. In one of his books there is a short chapter on _disagreeable_ diseases, as he terms them, “which work their own cure, and bring no grist to the doctor’s mill”.