BARBER

(Lat. barb a.) A person who makes a trade of shaving and dre ing the hair of other people for money. It would seem that it is only where a state has made considerable progre in civilisation that this art begins to flourish. If we believe Varro, for instance (Plin. 7. 66.), it was not until the 454th year of the city that Ticim first imported barbers into Rome from Sicily. Their shops (Tonstrinaj) soon became the resort of fashionable loongers and idlers; and Horace, to indicate the extreme notoriety of a story, says that it was " omnibus et lippis notum et tonsor i bus." Even the poorest citizens, according to the same author, sought refuge from their ennui in making a round of the barbers' shops:— Mutat ccenacula, Iectoe, Balnea, tonsores. That the Romans paid great attention to this department of the toilet, is obiuous from the ridicule that was excited against any citizen whose hair bore marks of being cut " in a equali tonsore" (by a bungling barber). But besides shaving the beard, to the barbers of the Romans was a igned the delicate task of trimming the nails. Hence Plautus, Aulul. ii. 4. 33. — " Quin ipsi pridem tonsor ungues dempserat;" and Tibullus, 1. 9. 11.:— Artificis docta gubsecui eQuid unpiesmanu. As early as the time of Hippo crates, some surgical operations were considered as degrading to physicians, and consequently fell to be performed by barbers. In Franc* the council of Tours, in the year 1163, prohibited the Hit gy, who then shared with the Jews the practice of me?1 cine in Christian Europe, from performing any bloody ope ration; and from that time the barbers remained for som i centuries in uninterrupted po e ion of the practice of surgery. In England also, early in the 16th century, tht barbers were incorporated with the surgeons of Londor [s. 144]