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white, wheaten, and household bread from this time forward
is to be halfpenny, penny, twopenny, sixpenny, twelvepenny,
and eighteenpenny loaves, and the eighteenpenny
loaves are to weigh full three times the weight of the sixpenny
loaves, and each sort to be marked with their respective
prices."
Up to the year 1665, the Plague was a frequent visitor.
After that perhaps the Small-pox was the most terrible
scourge. Almost everybody at some period of his life suffered
from its ravages to a greater or less extent, a large number of
persons being thus deprived of their sight. Taking the
disease was, in fact, regarded almost as a matter of course.
What may be called "Preventive Medicine" was then
practically unknown. Even inoculation was not practised in
this country until the year 1721, when Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu introduced it from the East, where it had long been
known ; while vaccination, which superseded inoculation, and
has so materially reduced Small-pox, and with care might
virtually eradicate it from our midst, was not discovered
until three-quarters of a century later. Diseases were not
classified as now, and many, such as different kinds of fever,
had not been diagnosed.
Licenses to practise as physicians or surgeons in London,
and within a radius of seven miles therefrom, were granted
by the Bishop of London or the Dean of St. Paul's, after
examination of the candidates by expert persons. The science
of physic had recently been placed on a sounder basis by Dr.
Sydenham (himself an inhabitant of St. James's), but
the professions of barber and surgeon were still one, their
corporate title being the Company of Barber-Surgeons.
It was not until the year 1745 that the union of the two arts
was dissolved, and the surgeons incorporated in a separate
Company, which was subsequently, by a charter of the 40th
year of King George III., denominated the Royal College of