them—such, for example, as citrine ointment, honey of roses, oxymel, and oil of roses—are still to be found in the pharmacopoeias of some nations.
Itinerant Lithotomists.—For an unknown number of years preceding the sixteenth century it had been a well-established custom for members of the medical profession in France, and also, doubtless, in neighboring countries, to intrust—as the Hippocratic oath enjoined—all cases of stone in the bladder to expert lithotomists. Such special knowledge and skill were not easily acquired, and so it came about that there were very few individuals who were acknowledged to be experts and who were really capable of teaching the art, and these few guarded most carefully the knowledge which they had gained. During the period of time which we are now considering, certain members of the Collot and Pineau families were the most distinguished lithotomists in France, and the records show that in the year 1600 Jehan Paradis and Nicolas Serre petitioned the Government for official recognition of their special rights to enjoy a monopoly of operative work of this character. "We ask that you give orders that all poor patients who may apply to Hôtel-Dieu (the great city hospital of Paris) or to the Bureau-of-the-Poor for relief from stone in the bladder, be turned over to our care for proper treatment. The poor will receive this treatment gratis, and those who can afford to pay will be charged a very reasonable fee. And you will do well if you prohibit all other persons from meddling with such cases in any manner." In a document bearing the date 1646 mention is made of four lithotomists—Philippe and Charles Collot, Jacques Girault and Antoine Ruffin—who had erected in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Paris, a building which was intended to serve as a hospital "in which, at any time during the entire year, those who are afflicted with stone in the bladder may be lodged, fed, nursed and subjected to proper treatment,—the poor without charge of any kind, and the well-to-do at a proper rate of remuneration."
In Franco's time (middle of the sixteenth century) cutting for stone in the bladder was by no means an
