Barbers travel through history
As long as someone has been making razors, there are barbers. In ancient civilizations such as Egypt (as early as 3500 BC), hairdressers were usually priests, whose main job was to prevent evil spirits from possessing people; They do this by trimming, styling and shaving the hair that the devil likes to enter the body.
This role evolved into a more modern role, the barber of the Greeks in the 5th century BC. Greek hairdressers cut off their hair, trimmed their beards and encouraged people to chat in the square. In Rome, hairdressers are called hairdressers, and many well-dressed Romans stop in their shops as part of their daily life.
Barbers are very popular even in the "dark ages" that are a bit unworthy of the name. Many monks, like Benedictines, like to shave their heads and keep only narrow hairstyles. Barbers are hired to manage this beauty service. In addition, due to the ban of the Pope, the barber is also responsible for the operation.
Historically, the Roman Catholic Church believed that surgery violated the temple of the Holy Spirit (human body). In view of this, several church meetings, including the tours Parliament of 1 163 and179, and the Fourth Rutland Parliament of 12 15, have issued decrees prohibiting priests and monks with a long academic history of medicine and surgery from performing operations. Although priests continue to study for the rich and become doctors, they rely on hairdressers for surgery and blood collection.
Besides the rich, hairdressers also help ordinary people. Furuncle, fracture and amputation are all common operations; The same is true of opening a hole, which is the process of drilling a hole in a person's head to release the evil forces that lead to mental illness and epilepsy.
Bladder obstruction is treated with a catheter (sometimes inserted through an incision, because the urethra of patients wrapped in syphilis is completely blocked), and kidney calculi takes it out with minor surgery.
But perhaps the most common operation performed by hairdressers in the Middle Ages was bloodletting. The barber will cut a vein with a narrow blade and let the blood pour into a small copper bowl; Through advertisements, many hairdressers will show the blood in these bowls in their windows to let people know that they are doing this service.
During the operation, the patient will hold a white stick to encourage blood flow, and a white bandage can be used to clean the patient. Wash the dirty bandage and hang it on the handrail outside the store to dry. For those wounds that are too soft or hard to reach, hairdressers will use special leeches, that is, leech medicine, which will release natural anesthetics and anticoagulants when sucking blood. These healthy and hungry leeches are usually put in a separate brass bowl.
pole
The famous pole is semiotic research. The white on the post represents the bloodletting stick held by the patient during the operation. Red stripes symbolize blood-stained bandages, which are usually as clean as possible and hung on a post to dry.
As for the rest, things get a little fuzzy. Some people think that the copper ball at the top represents a bowl of leeches, while the copper ball at the bottom evokes a bowl of blood. For those poles with blue stripes, many people think that this represents the texture.