Abstract

Before the industrial revolution, in Europe and The United States of America, a client could walk into a barbershop, have a shave, a haircut, a painful boil lacerated -and have some of his blood drained off to boot! Barbers were called “barber-surgeons” and men without a medical degree-in fact men without hardly a rudimentary education-were allowed to operate. In those days as well, children of the wealthy could buy commissions into the army and navy and become overnight army and navy officers-without ever having set foot in a military academy! Those were also the days when men read law books at home or apprenticed with lawyers, showed up for exams and received law degrees without ever setting foot on a college campus or attending a single lecture!