The First English Printing of Galen: The Formation of the Company of Barber-Surgeons

Abstract

ing of Galen in French.)2 It seems likely that the Questyonary was published as a response to the amalgamation of the Barbers' and Surgeons' companies in 1540, a union which produced a fresh concentration on the company's training and teaching function. These suggestions provide a historical context for the Questyonary's publication. Intellectually it can be located in two ways. In the long struggle over control of medical-surgical information these two books, both the English Questyonary and its French source, represent, of course, a liberal position, one which espouses broad access, as both of their prefaces formally attest. Evaluation of the Questyonary's position in the history of surgical education, however, must evoke a mixed response. All through the medieval period the recovery of Galen's work had been a desideratum, and the Questyonary was popular enough to be reprinted several times before the end of the sixteenth century. Yet this text of Galen's appears at almost the same time as the work which was to supplant it-Vesalius's De Fabrica, which was published in 1543. The Questyonary's title indicates that it is a compilation: liThe questyonary of I Cyrurgyens, with the formulary of I lytell Guydo in Cyrurgie, with I the spectacles of Cyrurgyens I newly added, with the I fourth Boke of the I Terapentyke, or Methode curatyfe of I Claude Galyen prynce of Physyciens, with a Synguler treaty of the cure I of vlceres, newely Enprynted at London, by me Robert