rship with barbers in one
corporate organization. In America, historians agree, the differences
based on specialization of practice between surgeons and physicians
soon tended to disappear, a superior education often being the only
attribute or function of a physician not shared by the surgeon. Barbers
held a unique position, but in performing phlebotomies, a minor
operation, they retained associations with health and disease. Both
barber and surgeon shared a certain expertness with tools, as they do
today.

Evidence abounds in the earlier records that the scarcity of medical
men may have compelled surgeons in Virginia to practice internal
medicine: surgeons prescribed medicine with the same frequency as
doctors. The surgeons, however, did not abandon the treatment of
wounds, fractures, and dislocations; notes on amputations during the
century also exist.

Nor is it reasonable to assume that the isolated physician of the
Virginia countryside would always insist upon referring a patient to a
surgeon. Dr. Francis Haddon, who had a large practice in York County,
Virginia, and who is not identified as a surgeon, left recorded the
course of treatment for an amputation--cordials, a purge, ointments,
and bloodletting--and a dismembering saw, as well.

Other recorded surgical treatments include care of dislocated
shoulders; wounds in various parts of the body; sores of the feet and
legs; cancerous ulcers in the instep; ulcers of the throat, and dueling
wounds. One of the most unusual surgical measures of the period was the
application of weapon salve for battle wounds; the salve was applied to
weapon, not wound.

Surgery has long been associated with the military, and much of the
outstanding surgical work done in Europe during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries was performed by military surgeons. Ambroise Pare
(c. 1510-1590), remembered especially for the use of the ligature in
amputations and the abandonment of the burning-oil treatment of wounds,
held a position as a surgeon for the French army. Other surgeons of the
period contributed to the improvement of medical practice by
enlightened measures of quarantine to prevent contagious diseases from
decimating armies.

Insomuch as the first settlers at Jamestown greatly feared attack from
Indians and Spaniards and because the initial landings had the
character of a military expedition, it is not surprising that the first
two medical men to arrive, Will Wilkinson and Th