The Barber Pole and Medieval Times

This barber’s pole may look like a quaint form of advertisement, reminiscent of a candy cane. However, it’s got a pretty sick story behind it.

You probably know that medicine in the Middle Ages was not informed by the scientific method, and that hygiene, anatomy, and physiology weren’t understood. A good reason for cutting open a person in a Medieval doctor’s mind might have been because they had an imbalance of the humors — got some redness and swelling? You might need a little bloodletting.

“Barbers” were people who did such cutting. They also performed dentistry, and whatever shaving needs might have been required. If you were to pass by a barber shop, you might see bowls of blood in a display window as a sort of demonstration of the barber’s profession. They didn’t have framed medical diplomas back in the day. (In London, people grew disgusted enough with this practice to have a law passed forbidding this display of blood in 1307 — barbers were told to dispose of these liquids in the river Thames.)

The pole of a barber was what a client held onto, squeezing so their veins showed enough to give the cutter easy access. The red and white stripes symbolized a patient’s bandages — they were washed and hung up to dry, and would whirl in the wind like the revolving red-and-white spirals on a barber’s pole.

Things got ever-so-much-more modern in England in 1540, when a law stating that barbers were not surgeons and that surgeons should get the red and white poles (and wear long robes) but barber’s should have blue and white poles (and shorter robes. Plebes.). These were superficial changes, though, and didn’t actually help improve medical practices.