Ambroise Paré (1510-1590): surgeon and obstetrician of the Renaissance.

Ambroise Pare's life spanned most of the sixteenth century. He was born in a village near Laval in Maine, to a chest maker. After an apprenticeship to a barber-surgeon in Angers from the age of 15, he spent four years (1532-36) as surgical dresser at the Hotel Dieu in Paris. Sylvius was one of his teachers. He qualified as a master barber-surgeon in 1541 and was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1554, an institution which he was eventually invited to head in 1567. Pare's very active life was divided from 1536 onwards between campaigning as an army surgeon in France's many wars and practising in his beloved Paris. Distinction came early. Even before qualification he had discovered during the Italian campaign of 1537 that boiling oil was not good for gun shot wounds. As he used to say: 'I dressed him and God healed him'. At that time he also rediscovered the value of the ligature to control haemorrhage during amputation.' Pare was a man of the Renaissance and his medical interests were encyclopaedic. Having had no formal university education and knowing little Latin or Greek (for which he was derided by the jealous physicians), he based his knowledge on experience rather than on classical dogma. He was a man of independence and originality, coupled with great power of observation, curiosity, meticulous attention to detail, and an ability to draw broad conclusions from the evidence before him. Fortunately, he also had admirable powers of narration and his many writings were eventually published as a complete works in French in 1575.2 Twenty five books deal with subjects as diverse as anatomy, physiology, medicine, surgery, pathology, pharmacy, natural history, infectious disease, obstetrics, and demonology. His original descriptions, discoveries, new techniques, and managements are endless. As a biographer wrote: 'The breadth, insight, force and humanity of his writings, their shrewd humour, his infinite care of trifles, the gentleness and clear-headed sense of his method they are amazing'. This volume, which went through several editions and was translated into many languages, had a profound influence on European medicine during the following 250 years. The English version from which the extracts that follow are taken was translated by a London apothecary, Thomas Johnson, and published in 1634. Ambroise Pare, aged 75 in 1585.