[Exclusion of wound physicians from health care in Germany 1871/72]

At the beginning of the 1870s, non-academic surgeons were finally banished from officially accepted medical practice in Württemberg - the last German Land in which they had still been recognized. As contemporary reports by barber-surgeons make clear, they had agreed to the elimination of their handiwork - in the hope of winning thereby generous "terms of transition" for the remaining practitioners of their trade. The fact is that in this point, too, barber-surgeons - at least for the most part - had but little success, clearly put them on the losing side in political conflict of professional interests.