Recently I started reading Don Quixote, and at the part where Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rob some poor barber, Cervantes mentions in passing that barbers are responsible for blood letting as well as shaving.
This reminded me of some depictions I had seen of barber's in the Hausbuch of Mendle's 12 brother foundation from the 14th-16th century. They're pretty darn confusing. http://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/75-Amb-2-317b-80-v
http://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/75-Amb-2-317-117-r
So while the medieval idea of what a barber does overlap with out modern idea of the same profession in some ways, it seems really quite bizarre and foreign in other ways. What's going on there?
In the 14-16th century the Barbers were something like a cross between what the modern day barbers, dentists and surgeon.
I don't know if you have ever looked at a shaving knife from close or tried to shave with one. Those knives are extremely sharp and you need really good handling skills for not cutting your costumer. The barbers thus had the knives and the skills and became a sort of "cutting/shaving with a very sharp knife specialist". So becoming a sort of surgeon was a natural expansion of there expertise, especially because bloodletting was a very popular cure in those times At least in the Low Countries, barbers were also the people who pulled teeths when clients asked for it.
Source: I read the 15th century "ambachtsstatuten" (guilds statutes) of the Barbers of Leuven.