ABSTRACT
We know the names, but not the deeds of the first surgeons who reached British Colonial America in 1603, 1607, and thereafter.1 Our professional ancestors in the Colonial period had no interest in writing or communicating their experiences of the surgeons world. Surgeons of this era had little or no formal education and even less cultural knowledge. Members of learned professions esteemed surgeons as less than desirable and their status was clearly unappreciated. The surgeon’s job was no more or less than the barber’s position, than the barber-surgeon status o f the times.2
