La disparition du barbier chirurgien: analyse d'une mutation professionnelle au XVIIIe siècle

The surgeon’s craft underwent deep changes during the Enlightenment: they have been interpreted as a “rise” or a “professionalization”, completed when barbers were definitely excluded from the practice of surgery. Considering the guilds in both Paris and London, this article analyses the ways by which surgeons conquered their own field of expertise, excluding barbers and physicians, and thus redefined their own occupation. In doing so, it establishes how surgical competence was shared by barbers and surgeons in the early modern period, and uncovers the factors of the occupational distinction, ranging from the economic to the political, which fashioned a new professional learned identity, placing itself in the service of empires.