"These four jobs - barber, doctor, surgeon,
and dentist - are not the same thing. If you
buck tradition and ask your surgeon to cut
your hair, you risk ending up a laughingstock
at school the next day. Ask your dentist to cut
off your leg? Well ... let's not think about that
one too much.
During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, though,
a single person - called a barber-surgeon - fulfilled
all these roles. And as odd as that might sound,
the way this job came to be actually makes a
wee bit of sense. You see, during the medieval
period, a sick or injured person only had so
many places they could go for help."
The author goes on to explain to readers that options were not plentiful: the garden for healing herbs; the church for prayers and penance; a folk healer for potions and medications; an apothecary for dried-up mummy parts; or a physician, who wasn't all that helpful because there were few of them and they were very expensive. It started with the barber and his skills with blades and his willingness to apprentice at doing other needed procedures. Risky? You bet. The choices were finite. The barber-surgeon is but one of the many jobs here described that people endured throughout history. After all, somebody had to do the job!
The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with jobs that deal with blood, medicine, and dead bodies. The second with poop, pee, and vomit. Dr. Virnig begins with mummy makers, leech collectors, the afore-mentioned barber-surgeons, resurrection men, mortuary watchmen, and finally present-day forensic entomologists and nursing assistants. In the second part, she describes those who cleaned up after wild Roman 'dinner parties', fullers who cleaned, degreased, and created wool fabrics, gongfermors who were designated poop-cleaning heroes, tanners who took hides and did all the work needed to finally have a piece of usable leather, grooms of the stool who helped royalty deal with bathroom issues, saltpeter men who collected saltpeter for making gunpowder, toshers who looked for treasure in the sewers, guano collectors, and today's Dalit manual scavengers in India whose job is to clean up other people's excrement.
The book's tone is consistently conversational and informative, often humorous (thank goodness!) and offers a lot of new learning. Korwin Briggs's sepia illustrations add context and needed humor. There is much to engage and appall interested readers. It is not for everyone, but many will find it endlessly interesting and often disgusting. The selected bibliography is EXTENSIVE for every single chapter. A useful glossary and index are appended. Brilliant nonfiction for middle grade students!
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