discourse 
UPON THE 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND SERVICES 
OF 
AMBROSE PARE; 
DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
CLASS OF THE JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE 
OF 
PHILADELPHIA, 
FEBRUARY 12, 1873. ) 
BY 
S. D. GROSS, M.D., LL.D., D.O.L. Oxon 
PHILADELPHIA: 
1\ MADEIRA, SURGICAL INSTRUMENT MAKER, 
115 TENTH STREET, BELOW CHESTNUT. 
18 73. DISCOURSE 
UPON THE 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND SERVICES 
OF 
AMBROSE PARE; 
DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
CLASS OF THE JEFFERSON MEDICAL COLLEGE 
l OF 
PHILADELPHIA, 
FEBRUARY 12, 1873. 
J 
S. D. GROSS, M.D., LL.D., D.C.L. Oxon. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
I\ MADEIRA, SURGICAL INSTRUMENT MAKER, 
115 TENTH STREET, BELOW CHESTNUT. 
1873. CORRESPONDENCE. 
At a meeting of the Students of the Jefferson Medical College, held February 15, 1873, 
it was unanimously 
Resolved, That a committee of six be appointed to request from Prof. Gross ft copy of his 
Discourse upon the Life of Ambrose Pare, for publication. 
J. R. IRWIN, President. 
Edward L. Parks, Secretary. 
Jefferson Medical College, February 17, 1873. 
Prof. S. D. Gross :— 
Dear Sir : Delighted listeners to your lecture of last Wednesday evening, we beg from you 
the manuscript, in order to place it in a more general and durable form. For this purpose 
we have been appointed a committee by the Class ; and in asking this favor we are glad to 
thank you in its behalf for the pleasure and profit we all derived from it. 
Very truly yours, 
EUGENE R. LEWIS, Chairman. 
D. GILMORE FOSTER, Secretary. 
W. H. GREENE. 
WM. II. IIANCKER. 
EDWIN J. DIRICKSON. 
FRANK TALIAFERRO. 
S. E. Corner Eleventh and Walnut Streets, 
February 18, 1873. 
Gentlemen : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your lettter, asking me to place 
at your disposal for publication the manuscript of my Discourse upon the Life, Character, 
and Services of Ambrose Pare. As the Discourse was delivered for your especial benefit, I 
cheerfully comply with your request, the more readily as you will thus be enabled to study 
at your leisure the career of one of the most wonderful men who have ever adorned our pro- 
fession ; a surgeon who was far in advance of the age in which he flourished, and an author 
who has left behind him imperishable works, from the perusal of which the practitioners 
even of the present day may imbibe valuable lessons. 
With my kind wishes for you and the Class you represent, I am, gentlemen, very truly your 
friend, » 
S. D. GROSS. 
To Messrs. Eugene R. Lewis, Chairman, D. Gilmore Foster, Secretary, 
W. II. Greene, William H. Hancker, Edwin J. Dirickson, Frank 
Taliaferro, Committee of Arrangements. DISCOURSE UPON AMBROSE PARE. 
To form a just estimate of the services of the man whose character 
it is my design here briefly to delineate, it is necessary to remember 
that he entered upon his career at a time when the arts and sciences 
were nearly extinct, when the intelligence of the world was shut 
up in the cloister, when philosophy was afraid to speak, and when 
the people were devoted more to the pursuits of war than to the 
cultivation of letters and the advancement of civilization. Unable 
altogether to free himself from the failings and prejudices of his 
age, he, nevertheless, stands forth as a bright example of true great- 
ness and Christian virtue; performing extraordinary labors as a 
civil and military surgeon, composing voluminous and useful trea- 
tises, occupying the highest social position, and winning for himself, 
by the force of his intellect, his unwearied industry, and the re- 
markable purity of his life, an imperishable name. The period in 
which he lived was one of the most remarkable in history. It was 
characterized by great and stirring events. At the time of his 
birth, hardly half a century had elapsed since the invention of the 
art of printing, and not more than seventeen years since Columbus 
had announced to Europe the discovery of a new hemisphere, now 
teeming with forty millions of people. Ere yet he had fairly en- 
tered upon the study of the profession which he afterwards so 
much adorned and illustrated, Luther was sowing the seeds of the 
Reformation, and shaking the foundation of the religious faith of 
Europe; Ariosto was maddening his countrymen with the beauty 
and pathos of his poetry ; Erasmus was delighting the world with 
his matchless scholarship; Copernicus was studying the revolu- 
tions of the heavenly bodies; and practical learning and genuine 
science were beginning, though only beginning, to assert their 
rights before men. 
Ambrose Pare was born at Laval, a little town in the Province of 
Mayenne, in 1509; consequently a little more than three centuries 
and a half ago. Of the character and occupation of his parents we 4 
are entirely ignorant; all that is satisfactorily known of them is, 
that they were poor, and that, after having given their son such 
an education as the opportunities of their residence afforded, they 
placed him with a priest, who was to instruct hi A in the Latin 
language. In consequence, however, of the very small price of 
tuition, he compelled his pupil to work in his garden, to take care 
of his mule, and to perform other menial services. It is not im- 
probable that the father of Ambrose originally intended him for 
some mechanical pursuit, or, it may be, for the ministry, for which 
his clerical preceptor was perhaps secretly preparing him. After 
he quitted his service, howrever, he was placed under the care of a 
barber-surgeon of Laval, named Vialot, who instructed him in the 
art of bleeding, and probably also in that of bandaging and of 
dressing fractures. While thus occupied, accident seems to have 
determined his future life. Colot, afterward so celebrated as a 
lithotomist, although then quite young, chancing to have a case of 
stone in the neighborhood, requested Ambrose to assist in holding 
the patient, an offer which he eagerly embraced. Struck with 
admiration at the result of the operation, he resolved to go to Paris 
to study the higher branches of surgery, an art which was then 
almost exclusively in the hands of the barbers. Here, availing 
himself of the services of masters who explained to him the works 
of Lanfranc, Guido de Cauliac, and John de Vigo, the only surgical 
text-books of the times, he soon acquired a passion for his profes- 
sion, and made the most brilliant progress. In a short time after 
he went to Paris, he was employed by Goupil, a professor in the 
College of France, to assist him in his practice, attending to such 
cases as required the minor operations of surgery, as bleeding, band- 
aging, and the dressing of wounds and ulcers. He also took lessons 
in the art of elocution, in which, it is said, he made great profi- 
ciency, having possessed a natural talent for speaking. It was not 
long before he obtained a situation in the Ilotel-IIieu, as a resident 
pupil; and it may well be imagined with what delight and eager- 
ness he availed himself of the opportunities of a hospital which was 
then, as it has ever since been, one of the largest establishments of 
the kind in the world. So great was his progress that, after a 
sojourn here of three years, he was appointed, in 1536, when only 
twenty-seven years old, to accompany the Colonel-general of artil- 
lery, Rene de Mont-jean, in the capacity of surgeon, to Italy. On 
his return to Paris, which took place after the surrender of Turin, 
and the death of his military friend, he entered upon the practice 5 
of surgery in that city, and by his skill and good conduct soon 
attracted the attention of the public. 
The opportunities for studying medicine and. surgery in the time 
of Pare can he properly appreciated only by a survey of the state 
of the profession in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These 
periods belonged emphatically to the dark ages. The art of print- 
ing, invented in 1452, had as yet done little to enlighten the general 
mind or to advance the interests of our profession. The sun of 
medicine had long ago sunk behind the horizon; Europe had no 
medical philosophers; and even the feeble light shed abroad by the 
school of Salerno, established in the eleventh century, was flicker- 
ing in its socket and almost extinct. Chemistry, properly so called, 
had no existence; the only text-book of anatomy was that of Mon- 
dino, a medley of inaccuracy and superstition ; the practice of medi- 
cine was overloaded with polypharmacy; midwifery wras exclusively 
in the hands of females; and in surgery the only works in any 
favor were those of Lanfranc, Guido de Cauliac, and John de Vigo, 
all destitute of vigor and originality. The system of instruction 
by lecturing, as followed at the present day, was entirely unknown. 
Public teaching was limited to an exposition of the writings of 
some of the older masters; dissections could be carried on only by 
stealth; and a student must, indeed, have been exceedingly fortu- 
nate if he could occasionally witness an operation upon the living 
or dead subject. 
In the infancy of society medicine and surgery were practiced 
indiscriminately by the same persons. The human body was con- 
sidered as a unit, and no distinction was made between internal 
and external diseases. The separation of medicine and surgery 
did not occur until a comparatively recent period. Surgery, as 
such, was originally practiced exclusively by the priesthood, who 
were thus enabled to exercise a much greater influence upon the 
public, besides making it a source of profit for the aggrandizement 
of the church. This state of things continued until 1163, when 
the Council of Tours, held by Pope Alexander III., resolved to re- 
call the clergy to their legitimate duties, from which they had 
been partially alienated by their secular occupations, and accord- 
ingly decreed that no one who had taken a religious vow should 
thenceforth engage in the study of medicine under fear of excom- 
munication. Notwithstanding the severity of this penalty, the 
edict was soon infringed, and it therefore became necessary to ful- 
minate a fresh anathema against transgressors, with the additional 6 
proviso that, “ as the church abhorred all cruel aud sanguinary 
operations, the priests should not only abstain from the practice of 
surgery, hut also withhold their benediction from all who professed 
it in any manner whatever.”* 
The effect of this new enactment, which took place in the reign 
of Pope Honorius III., in 1215, was to throw the practice of med- 
icine into the hands of laymen, and to compel the sick to visit the 
priests at their cloisters. Such of them as were unable to do this 
contented themselves with sending their dejections, the inspection 
of which, it was asserted, was quite sufficient for these men to 
form a correct diagnosis of the disease. As to the surgicaLcases, 
the priests had them attended by the barbers of the neighborhood, 
whose chief business it was to bleed, draw teeth, and dress wounds 
and sores, besides shaving, and tonsurating the heads of their clerical 
masters. Thus arose the distinction of barber-surgeon, a name 
which they retained until the middle of the seventeenth century. 
In 1268, St. Louis, desirous of exhibiting his gratitude to the 
surgeons for the important services which they had rendered to his 
soldiers during the Crusades, established at Paris a College of Sur- 
geons, in honor of St. Cosme. To be eligible for membership in 
this institution, the first of the kind ever founded, it was necessary 
for the candidate to possess a good academical education, to go 
through a regular course of studies, and to pass a creditable ex- 
amination. From the privileges of this college the clerical barbers, 
or servants of the priests, were, of course, excluded; a circum- 
stance which gave rise to the distinction of the surgeons into two 
orders, the licentiates of the College of St. Cosme, or the master- 
chirurgeons, and the shavers, or barber-surgeons, properly so 
termed. Tare, early in life, became a member of the fraternity of 
master-surgeons, for in his treatise on wounds, published in 1545, 
he assumes the title of master-barber-surgeon at Paris, and this 
title he retained until 1552, when he became surgeon-in-ordinary 
to King Henry II. 
The distinction of master-surgeons and barher-surgeons con- 
tinued until 1655, when they were incorporated in one college; 
“ a union which was further confirmed, in 1660, by royal ordi- 
nance, under some limitations, whereby the barbers should not 
assume the title of licentiates, bachelors, or professors, nor be 
allowed to wear the honorable gown and cap that distinguished 
* Milliugen’s Curiosities of Medical Experience, p. 286. London, 1839. 7 
the higher grades of learning. Red caps were in former times 
given by each barber to his teacher on his being qualified, and 
gloves to his fellow-students.” 
There was another distinction between these two classes of sur- 
geons, one, indeed, which was common to them and the physi- 
cians, namely, the surgeons of the long robe and the surgeons of 
the short robe, the former constituting, as it were, the dignitaries 
of the profession. The practitioners of those days were in the 
habit, in all parts of continental Europe, but more particularly in 
Paris, of visiting their patients on mules, attired in this peculiar 
garb, and of concealing their ignorance by holding their conversation 
in bad Latin; “ or, if they condescended to employ the vernacular, 
mixing it up with such a jargon of scholastic phrase and scientific 
technics as to render it perfectly unintelligible to vulgar ears.” 
This practice continued until after the middle of the seventeenth 
century, when, chiefly through the influence of Moli&re, who 
leveled at it the shafts of his raillery and his sarcasm, it was 
gradually abandoned for the dress of the men of the world. In 
Great Britain the wig and gold-headed cane, relics of the same 
pompous custom, were in vogue until a much later period ; the 
latter, indeed, until the death of Dr. Baillie, in 1823, after it had 
been in use among some of the most illustrious members of the 
profession in England for a century and a half. 
In this country, as well as in certain portions of the continent of 
Europe, the race of barber-surgeons is not yet wholly extinct. In 
not a few of the smaller villages and towns of this State some of 
the barbers, in addition to their distinctive occupation, add that of 
bleeding, cupping, and extracting teeth, the usual charge for the 
first and last of these operations being twelve and a half cents; a 
circumstance which, alone, insures them business. 
The pole used by the barbers both in this and other countries 
was formerly employed by the barber-surgeons as a sign of their 
particular profession. In bloodletting it was customary, as, in fact, 
it still is, for the patient to grasp a stick,'while the arm was tied 
up with a red fillet, or a piece of red flannel. When the operation 
was over, the fillet was twisted round the stick or pole, which was 
then hung up as a sign to attract customers, venesection being a 
very common operation, especially among country people, in the 
spring and autumn. In time, instead of hanging out the actual 
pole, a pole painted with red stripes was permanently placed at 8 
the door of the barber-surgeon, just as it now is at the shop of the 
barber.* 
Thus it will he perceived that the descent of the surgeon was 
anything hut aristocratic, or flattering to his vanity. Like many 
other pursuits it had its origin in obscurity and humility. Am- 
brose Pard was its great head, the point of departure of the many 
illustrious names that have since adorned this branch of the heal- 
ing art, and conferred so many blessings upon the human race. 
He was the prototype of a Desault, a Dupuytren, a Hunter, a 
Richter, a Physick, and a host of other worthies whose fame is 
as imperishable as the science they so successfully cultivated. 
Pare, as has already been stated, was appointed surgeon-in-ordi- 
nary to King Henry II. in 1552, and be served in the same capacity 
Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. These inonarchs were 
all warmly attached to himhe was at once their privy-counsellor 
and their professional adviser; he followed them in their cam- 
paigns, and he attended them in their retirement. Their confi- 
dence in his skill was boundless. When Charles IX. was thought 
to be hopelessly ill from the effects of a wound in the arm, conse- 
quent upon venesection, Pare soon succeeded in relieving his suffer- 
ing, and finally in restoring him to health, thus securing his lasting 
esteem and gratitude. 
The confidence of the public at large in the knowledge and skill 
of this remarkable man was not less extraordinary. The power of 
this confidence was strikingly illustrated by a circumstance which 
happened at the siege of Metz, soon after he was appointed court 
surgeon. This town, which was invested by Charles V., at the 
head of a hundred thousand men, contained the flower of the 
French nobility, and many of the finest soldiers of the day, all 
reduced to the utmost extremity by hunger and fatigue, hardly 
any of the wounded escaping death, such was the miserable pro- 
fessional skill of the place. It was at this juncture that the be- 
leaguered army bethought themselves of Pare. They accordingly 
dispatched a messenger fo the French king, entreating him to send 
Pare to them. He arrived late at night, and being introduced into 
* The multifarious duties sometimes demanded of the medical man in former 
times are well illustrated in an advertisement hardly half a century old : “Wanted, 
for a family who have had bad health, a sober, steady person in the capacity of 
doctor, surgeon, apothecary, and man midwife. He must occasionally act as butler, 
and dress hair and wigs. He will be required sometimes to read prayers, and to 
preach a sermon every Sunday. A good salary will be given.” 9 
the city through the treachery of an Italian captain, who received 
a large reward for his services, both officers and soldiers immedi- 
ately crowded around him, and, exhibiting the most profound 
delight at his presence, exclaimed, “we have no longer any fear of 
dying even if we should he wounded; Pare, our friend, is among 
us.” Every one was inspired with new courage, and the result 
was that Metz, which, but a moment before, was almost at the 
point of surrendering, held out until the gallant army, which lay 
beneath its walls, perished from disease and famine. 
His influence over Charles IX. was so great that it enabled him 
to put a stop to the progress of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
on the 24th of August, 1572, when 70,000 Protestants, better 
known h}' the name of Huguenots, were butchered in Paris, and 
in various parts of France, by order of that weak and youthful 
prince. Private animosities, often terminating in bloodshed, had 
long existed between the Huguenots and Catholics; and affairs 
had, at length, reached such a crisis that it was determined to 
exterminate, if possible, the former by a single blow. For this 
purpose, the court issued orders, on the night above mentioned, to 
the Provost of Paris, to provide 2000 armed men, each supplied 
with a particular badge, and to be ready for the work on the ring- 
ing of the bell of the palace clock. It is related that, as the awful 
moment approached, Charles, who was then hardly twenty-three 
years of age, was seized with horror at the contemplation of the 
impending scene, and that he would willingly have retracted his 
orders if he could have withstood the pernicious counsels of his 
mother. His countenance was blanched and ghastly, his forehead 
was bedewed with cold perspiration, and his whole frame shook 
like that of a man laboring under an attack of ague. That night 
the house of every Huguenot in Paris was broken open, and the 
inhabitants murdered without distinction of age, sex, or rank. The 
streets were strewed with the bodies of the slain, and the blood- 
thirsty monarch himself is said to have fired upon his subjects, in 
their attempt to escape from the Faubourg St. Germain. 
For three days and nights this inhuman butchery prevailed in 
the streets of the French capital; and had it not been for the in- 
fluence of one man, although that man was a Huguenot, the de- 
struction would probably have been continued until not one Pro- 
testant would have been left to tell the sad story of an event which 
must forever disgrace the name of France. That man was Am- 
brose Pare. “It was not long,” says the Duke of Sully, who has 10 
so graphically described this scene of carnage and of cruelty, 
“before Charles felt the most violent remorse for the barbarous 
action to which they had forced him to give the sanction of his 
name and authority. From the evening of the 24th of August he 
was observed to groan involuntarily at the recitation of a thousand 
acts of cruelty, which every one boasted of in his presence. Of 
all those who were about the person of this prince, none possessed 
so great a share of his confidence as Ambrose Pard, his surgeon. 
This man, though a Huguenot, lived with him in so great a degree 
of familiarity that, on the day of the massacre, Charles telling 
him the time was now come when he must turn a Catholic, he 
replied, without being alarmed, ‘By the light of God, sire, you 
cannot have forgot your promise, never to command me to do four 
things, namely, to enter into my mother’s womb, to be present in 
the day of battle, to quit your service, or to go to mass.’ The 
king soon after took him aside, and disclosed to him freely the 
trouble of his soul: ‘Ambrose,’ said he, ‘I know not what has 
happened these two or three days past, but I feel my mind and 
body as much at enmity with each other as if I were seized with 
a fever: sleeping or waking, the murdered Huguenots seem ever 
present to my eyes, with ghastly faces, and weltering in blood. 
I wish the innocent and helpless at least had been spared.’ The 
order which was published the following day, forbidding the con- 
tinuance of the massacre, was the consequence of this conversa- 
tion.” Pare, at the time of this massacre, was sixty-two years of 
age, and of all the good deeds which he ever performed there was 
not one, it may be supposed, that afforded him so much heartfelt 
satisfaction. Charles did not long survive this horrible war upon 
his own subjects. His conscience was tilled with remorse, and he 
fell a prey to his infirmities when only twenty-five years of age, 
being succeeded by Henry III., who had the good sense to retain 
Pare in his service. 
Pare was a copious author. His first publication was given to 
the world soon after his return from the wars in Italy, under the 
title of “A Method of Treating Gunshot and other Wounds,” the 
fruits of his observations in the army. It appeared in 1545, when 
he was not more than thirty-five years of age. This was soon 
followed by other treatises, both anatomical and surgical, which 
attracted much attention at home and abroad, and thus served to 
enlarge a reputation that was already exciting the envy and oppo- 
sition of his contemporaries, especially the physicians. It was not 11 
until 1575 that a complete edition of his works appeared. The 
book was printed in folio, and was accompanied by numerous wood- 
cuts illustrative of the anatomy of the human body, of surgical 
instruments, and of different kinds of monsters, upon the latter of 
which there is an elaborate and entertaining chapter. The figures, 
amounting to 300, were prepared at Fare’s own expense, at a cost 
of 3000 livres, a large sum when we consider the character of 
the professional charges of the times; and they afford an excellent 
idea of the state of the art of engraving soon after the middle of 
the sixteenth century. 
The edition was very appropriately dedicated to Henry III., 
“the most Christian king of France and Poland,” “a pattern and 
treasury of my labors.” From an epistle accompanying the in- 
scription I make the following extract, as it serves to show how 
long the author had served his profession and the estimate he placed 
upon his literary and scientific labors:— 
“For God is my witness, and all good men know that I have 
now labored fifty years with all care and pains in,the illustration 
and amplification of chirurgery, and that I have so certainly 
touched the mark whereat I aimed, that antiquity may seem to 
have nothing wherein it may exceed us, besides the glory of inven- 
tion; nor posterity anything left but a certain small hope to add 
some things, as it is easy to add to former inventions. In perform- 
ance whereof I have been so prodigal of myself, my watchings, 
faculties, and means, that I spared neither time, labor, nor cost, 
whereby I might satisfy and accomplish my own desires, this my 
great work.” 
His object evidently was to produce a great and comprehensive 
treatise, combining both the theory and practice of surgery. In 
his attempt to carry out this noble design he sought not his own 
glory alone, but also, as he distinctly avows in the dedication above 
referred to, the “praise and profit” of the French nation. 
In 1582 an edition of his works appeared in Latin, at Paris, 
beautifully illustrated, and printed in superior style. The name of 
the translator was not given, but it is generally supposed to have 
been Hautin, a learned physician, and a personal friend of the 
author. Not less than six editions of this translation were succes- 
sively issued at Frankfort, the last in 1652, nearly three-quarters 
of a century after the death of Pare. 
From the great celebrity which the works of Pare had attained 
at home, it is not surprising that they should have been translated 12 
into the principal learned languages of Europe. Among tlie 
nations which thus appropriated the labors of the illustrious 
Frenchman, the Dutch deserve the praise of having led the way, 
a translation having appeared in Leyden as early as 1604. Subse- 
quently four editions were published in Holland, one at Harlem, and 
three at Amsterdam, the last in 1649. Five editions appeared in 
Germany, and also several in England, the most complete of which 
is that of Thomas Johnson, at London, in 1634, under the title of 
“The Works of that famous Chirurgeon, Ambrose Fare, translated 
out of the Latin and compared with the French.” The title-page, 
according to the fashion of that day, is illuminated with a portrait 
of Par£ at the centre of the top, a picture of a man undergoing the 
operation of trephining being on the left, and an apothecary with 
his jars and bottles on the right; further down are suspended a 
skeleton and a subject exhibiting the muscles; while at the bottom 
of the page are retorts and alembics, surgical instruments, and 
different animals, the whole forming a very grotesque but interest- 
ing feature of the art of engraving in the early part of the seven- 
teenth century. The work passed altogether through three edi- 
tions, the last bearing the imprint of 1678. 
Johnson seems to have executed his translation with great care 
and fidelity, or, to use his own language, “plainly and honestly, 
laboring to fit it to the capacity of the meanest artist.” The 
Apology, and Voyages forming the concluding portions of the work, 
were “Englished” by George Baker, a surgeon, of London, “ since 
that time, as I hear,” says Johnson, “ dead beyond the seas.” The 
translator has generally confined himself rigidly to his text, but in 
a few places he has added various explanatory notes. 
All these different translations, as well as the original French 
works of Par6, are now extremely scarce. Occasionally a stray 
copy, the value of which was not appreciated, or which belonged 
to some deceased medical man, is found in an auction room, or upon 
the shelves of some collector of old and rare books; but there are 
few surgeons of the present day whose libraries are graced by such 
a treasure. 
In 1840, a new edition of his collected works was published at 
Paris, in three beautiful royal octavo volumes, by Mons. Malgaigne, 
one of the great admirers of the father of French surgery, and him- 
self a man of great learning and celebrity in his profession. It is 
illustrated by a full-length portrait of Par6, from a painting by 
David, and is accompanied by numerous historical and critical 13 
notes, preceded by a sketch of the history of surgery in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries, and a memoir of the life and writ- 
ings of the author. For this edition, by which I have materially 
profited in the preparation of this sketch, the profession owes Mal- 
gaigne a debt of gratitude, as it places the works of Pare, in a 
greatly improved form, within the reach of every modern medical 
scholar. 
It was long a question with medical historians, whether Ambrose 
Pare was really the author of the works which bear his name, or 
whether he merely superintended their composition. Quite a num- 
ber of persons have been invested with this honor, as though they 
had been mere hirelings,selling their labors and their birth-right for 
a mess of pottage. Malgaigne, who has investigated this subject 
with his accustomed patience and learning, positively avers that 
there is no reason whatever to believe that Pare derived any aid 
of this kind from any one. This, indeed, appears sufficiently evi- 
dent from what Pare himself says in the preface to his works ; for, 
after alluding to the fact that he had submitted his writings to the 
inspection of some of his professional friends, medical as well as 
surgical, he avows that they are all his own, the materials and the 
whole fabric being based upon his personal observation and reading. 
Much of this dispute respecting the authenticity of Fare’s writ- 
ings doubtless had its origin in the fact that the College of Paris, 
composed exclusively of physicians, claimed the privilege of licens- 
ing books, a privilege which Pare spurned, inasmuch as he had ob- 
tained a direct order for issuing his works from the king. The 
College had evidently not supposed that a surgeon could write so 
great a treatise upon anatomy, surgery, pharmacy, campaigns, and 
natural history ; its range was far beyond their comprehension, 
and it Avas therefore perhaps natural for them, especially as they 
were extremely jealous of their imagined rights, to accuse Pare of 
having furnished merely a compilation, the labor chiefly of young 
physicians, as if young medical men were more competent to com- 
pose a treatise on surgery than one who had devoted a whole 
lifetime to its practice and contemplation. 
The greatest service rendered by Pare to his profession and to the 
world was his application of the ligature to divided arteries, for 
the purpose of arresting hemorrhage. The value of this treatment 
can be duly estimated, at the present day, only by an acquaintance 
with the practice of the older surgeons in cases of injuries and ope- 
rations involving any considerable loss of blood. For ages the 14 
only remedy for arresting hemorrhage was the actual cautery, or a 
piece of heated iron applied directly to the orifice of the bleeding 
vessel. It was particularly popular among the Arabian surgeons, 
from whom it was borrowed by the practitioners of France, and it 
was in high repute when Pard entered upon his professional career. 
Albucasis, who flourished in the latter half of the eleventh century 
and the beginning of the twelfth, and whose surgical treatises were 
republished at Oxford, England, as late as 1778, Avrote fifty-eight 
chapters on the actual cautery, in which, among other things, he 
took special pains to point out its advantages as a hemostatic agent. 
The result of this practice was that the great majority of those who 
were subjected to it perished from secondary hemorrhage, coming 
on at a variable period after the detachment of the sloughs, which 
almost necessarily followed the searing of the divided vessels. If 
the artery was large, the unfortunate patient generally died soon 
after the accident, from the inability of the blood to form a suffi- 
ciently strong and opposing clot. In many cases the bleeding re- 
curred from time to time until the system was completely drained 
of blood. The operation was not only painful, hut excessively 
alarming, so that many persons would almost prefer death to sub- 
mitting to its cruel requirements. When a limb was amputated, 
the custom for a long time was to plunge the stump in boiling oil 
or pitch ; and, during naval engagements, it was customary to 
keep these fluids on hand in the cockpit of vessels, ready for use in 
case of need. Pare for awhile followed a practice which had been 
sanctioned by long usage, though he did not fail, from the very first, 
to perceive its cruelty and utter inadequacy. He was swept along 
by the general current. Ilis mind, however, was silently engaged 
in devising a more efficient and scientific treatment: and, after 
numerous trials, he at length announced to his professional brethren 
the use of the ligature as a remedy at once safe and of universal 
applicability. It is possible that he found the traces of his inven- 
tion in the writings of Celsus and Albucasis, for it is certain that 
both of these authors refer to the subject, although it does not 
appear that they ever employed the treatment at the bedside. In- 
deed, the Roman physician probably never practiced at all, while it 
is certain that the Arabian continued until the close of his life to 
confine himself to the hot iron. If this assumption be correct, it 
follows that the credit of first applying the ligature for the arrest 
of hemorrhage strictly belongs to Pare, and such, I am satisfied, is 
the fact. He certainly did not derive the idea from any of his con- 15 
temporaries; if he had, their clamors would soon have furnished 
the proof. 
It might have been supposed that the truth with which he was 
to enrich his age would have been first received and fostered in the 
heart of his professional brethren at Paris. But it was otherwise. 
Opposition met him in every quarter. Many of his most influen- 
tial contemporaries became turbulent and furious in their denunci- 
ations, and Pard, like Ilarvey at a latter period, for a discovery also 
pregnant with important blessings, suffered for awhile in his prac- 
tice. Of his different enemies, none were so loud and vindictive as 
Gourmelen, President of the College of France, a coxcomb of little 
brains but great pretension, whom they appointed at a latter period 
to prosecute Pard in the courts of justice, because he dared to pub- 
lish his work on surgery. “ It was then,” says this conceited per- 
sonage, who is now remembered only for his persecutions of his 
illustrious contemporary, “it was then very forward, rash, and pre- 
sumptuous in a certain individual, to venture upon condemning the 
cauterization of bleeding; vessels after cutting; off' a mortified limb, 
a method so highly and continually commended and approved by all 
the ancients, teaching in opposition to that, without any authority, 
without knowledge, without experience, without good sense, some 
new method of his own, of tying arteries and veins.” 
In the controversies thus engendered, coarse and vulgar expres- 
sions were often interchanged, imparting a fierceness and a want 
of dignity not altogether obsolete among certain medical men 
at the present day. Thus, Gourmelen calls Pard a blood-thirsty, 
cruel rascal, while Pard retorts in language no less vulgar and 
inelegant. But the illustrious surgeon could not be supposed to 
be able to submit to every abuse that was heaped upon him by a 
set of men who, prompted by envy and jealousy, spared no pains to 
crush him and destroy his influence. 
“You boast, Mons. Gourmelen, that you will teach me my lessons 
in surgery, and my operations; but in that, I believe, you are a 
little mistaken, for my education has been quite after another 
fashion. I have learned my art, not in my closet; no, nor by 
hearing the discourses of physicians, though that also I have not 
despised; but in the IIotel-Dieu, where I lived for three years, 
seeing many diseases, and practicing many operations upon the 
living body, and learning also much anatomy by dissection of the 
dead.” “ But,” continued he, “I have yet more to boast of, for, being 
called into the service of the kings of France, I have, in my time, 16 
served four successive kings, having followed them in battles, skir- 
mishes, and assaults; sometimes I have been in sieges, and some- 
times shut up with the besieged, curing their wounds.” * * * 
“And last of all, I have lived in this great renowned City of Paris 
many long years, where, thank God, I have been held in some 
repute, and ranked, at least, equal to my peers, insomuch that 
there have been few difficult or celebrated cures in which my head 
and hand have not been employed. How, seeing these things, dare 
such a man as you, who has made surgery no part of your study, 
talk of teaching me?” 
These persecutions were exceedingly annoying to Pare, whose 
sensitive mind and proud temper ill qualified him to cope with 
such adversaries. They declared not only that the application of 
the ligature was injurious, but that it had been used centuries 
before, and they almost compelled him to acknowledge his errors 
by making him seek for traces of his discovery in the writings of 
Celsus, Galen, Avicenna, and other ancient authors. The result of 
this malice and opposition was that few of his contemporaries or 
immediate successors adopted the practice, which, consequently, 
soon fell into total neglect. They would rather continue to 
cauterize arteries and to scald stumps after amputation of the limbs 
than to have recourse to the ligature. This is so much the more 
surprising when it is recollected that many of them were eye- 
witnesses of the success of Park’s practice, and with what care and 
judgment he laid down the rules for the ligation of the vessels; 
rules which, with a few trivial exceptions, are still in force in the 
schools. 
Of the value of the ligature in suppressing hemorrhage, it would 
be folly at the present day to speak, when its claims are so univer- 
sally established. There is no mode of treatment which can be 
employed as a substitute; styptics and compression, so much in 
vogue even as late as the last century, are, as a general rule, wholly 
inadequate for the purpose; and, as to acupressure, introduced to 
the notice of the profession by Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh, 
in 1860, its value as a ready, available hemostatic agent, remains 
to be determined. Had it not been for this great discovery, it is 
easy to perceive that many of the operations performed by modern 
surgeons could never have been attempted without the risk of des- 
troying the patient by hemorrhage. The contemporaries and imme- 
diate successors ofPard, by their opposition to the ligature, greatly 
retarded the progress of surgery, and were thus guilty of the loss 17 
of innumerable lives. Parti himself was justly proud of his dis- 
covery; but, with the modesty of true genius, and the inspiration 
of piety, he arrogated nothing to himself, but ascribed all to God. 
“ For the good of mankind, and the improvement and glory of 
surgery, I was inspired,” says he, “ with this good thought.” 
But the application of the ligature for the arrest of hemorrhage 
was not the only improvement effected by this great man. He 
was the first to lance the gums in difficult dentition, his own infant 
daughter being the patient; to employ the twisted suture in the 
operation for harelip; to extract cartilaginous concretions from 
the knee-joint; and to reduce dislocations of the shoulder by 
placing the heel in the axilla, a practice so much and so justly in 
use at the present day. 
He was a warm advocate of the use of the bandage, which he 
applied with much benefit in the treatment of a great variety of 
affections; and he invented a number of instripnents, as well as 
several ingenious apparatuses. His writings contain the first 
account of what has since been known as Iley’s saw, and of the 
club-foot boot, claimed to have been first devised by Mr. Syme of 
Edinburgh. Among the more curious novelties, as they were 
doubtless then considered, are delineations of artificial legs, hands, 
and noses, the latter of which, especially, might perhaps be occa- 
sionally usefully employed at the present day. In short, it is 
impossible to peruse his works without being struck with the 
astonishing variety and fertility of his resources. 
Ilis skill as an operator must have been very great, for he was 
an excellent anatomist, and thoroughly trained in the use of 
instruments. But it was particularly as a therapeutist that his 
knowledge and sagacity appear to the best advantage. He 
effected many wonderful cures, both in civil and military practice, 
and it was this circumstance that gave him such a commanding 
position among his contemporaries. 
As a military surgeon, he was far in advance of his age, both at 
home and abroad. When he entered the service, he found the 
army without any regular medical organization, and very few of 
those that were wounded ever recovered, for all gunshot injuries 
were, at that time, as they had been long previously, regarded as of 
a poisonous character. Determined to improve the condition of 
the troops as much as possible, he soon succeeded in deducing 
order out of confusion, and of placing the service in a position 
which it had never attained before. The practice then universally 18 
was to pour boiling oil into all wounds made with fire-arms. Pare 
saw that this treatment was not only intensely painful, but that it 
invariably aggravated the complaint so that very few patients 
recovered. lie accordingly instituted a milder system of medica- 
tion. During the campaign in Italy, learning that there was a 
surgeon at Turin celebrated for curing gunshot wounds, he paid 
him the most assiduous attention for more than two years, in order 
to obtain from him his famous secret. His career as a military 
surgeon extended from 1536 down to the battle of Moncontour, in 
1569, a period of thirty-three years. Ho man in the army was 
ever more beloved, more popular, or more useful. 
History furnishes hut one similar example of such remarkable 
popularity. It is that of Larrey, Surgeon-in-Chief of the Grand 
Army of Napoleon, whom he followed, like a guardian angel, in 
all his military campaigns. During the retreat from Russia, when 
the soldiers, exhausted by cold, hunger, and fatigue, were obliged 
to seek their safety in flight, a river had to be crossed by two 
temporarily constructed bridges. “ But not the troops alone were 
hurrying over. With the soldiers, and horses, and artillery,” says 
Dr. John Bell, who has so graphically described the scene in his 
“ Medical Heroism,” “crowded on unhappy fugitives from Moscow, 
with their wives, and children,, and baggage. In the advancing 
multitude Larrey was recognized, and immediately a thousand 
voices exclaimed, 4 Let us save him who has saved us. Let him 
come forward.’ All stop at once in their wild rush; Larrey is 
allowed to reach the bridge, and he is suddenly raised in the arms 
of the nearest soldiers, and passed from hand to hand, until he is, 
in this manner, carried entirely across the river. lie is saved just 
at the moment when the bridge gives way, and a crowd of human 
beings, of both sexes and all ages, together with horses, and cannon, 
and military wagons, are precipitated into the half-frozen stream 
beneath, most of them never to reach its banks, never to breathe 
again.” 
This was the man whom Napoleon thus mentions in his will: 
“I bequeath to the Surgeon-in-Chief of the French Army, Baron 
Larrey, 100,000 francs. lie is the most virtuous man I have ever 
known.” 
One of the most interesting portions of Parc’s writings is that 
which relates to his military travels, or, as he terms them, “the 
voyages made into divers places.” This is preceded by an “Apolo- 
gy,” in which he attempts, by an appeal to the results of his 19 
practice, to defend himself against the aspersions of his enemies 
respecting the use of the ligature, and nothing could certainly be 
more satisfactory or triumphant, refuting as he does, completely 
and thoroughly, all the flimsy and ridiculous charges preferred by 
their leader, the base and unscrupulous Gourmelen. 
The object he had in preparing an account of his travels was to 
place before the public, in a full and authentic form, his experience 
as a military surgeon, as well as his observations on the various 
sieges and battles of which he was an eye-witness. lie thus fore- 
shadowed a species of literature which has since been so happily 
elaborated by Larrey in his “ Memoirs of Military Surgery, and 
Campaigns of the French Armies.” He details most of the events 
which he saw with circumstantial minuteness, and, from the re- 
marks which he occasionally drops, it is only too evident that the 
“ Treatise ” was written under a kind of necessity, his enemies 
having openly pronounced many of his oral statements as false, to 
so shameful an extent did they carry their malice against every- 
thing done and uttered by this great man. But all this opposition, 
here as elsewhere, was in vain. The curs of the profession might 
bark at and annoy, but could not seriously hurt him. The shafts 
of their envy recoiled only the more fiercely against themselves. 
In performing these military journeys, Par6 lost no opportunity 
of inspecting whatever was of interest in the regions of country 
through which he passed, and of making the acquaintance of dis- 
tinguished professional men, with a view of obtaining from them 
a knowledge of the peculiarities of their practice, and such other 
information as might be of use to him in the prosecution of his 
various labors. Like a busy bee, he tried to extract honey from 
every flower. 
Pard never wore the professor’s gown and cap, and it was per- 
haps well he did not; for in those days medical and surgical teach- 
ing could certainly not have offered much inducement to any one, 
much less to a court surgeon. 
The personal character of Pard is full of interest. His stature 
was tall, his figure slender, his countenance grave and dignified. 
The portrait in his works represents him in his court dress, with a 
collar on his neck. 
Piety formed a prominent trait in his mental constitution, and 
upon no occasion did he omit to glorify God, always ascribing the 
wonderful cures which he effected to his immediate aid and inter- 20 
position. The expression, “I apply the remedy, or I dress the 
wound, and God cures,” occurs in various portions of his writings, 
and has been inscribed in large letters underneath his statue in 
the School of Medicine at Paris. In critical cases demanding un- 
© 
usual skill, it was not uncommon for him to pray in private for 
the success of his remedies. Thus, when he was sent'for at a con- 
siderable distance from Paris, to attend the Marquis of Aurct, who, 
seven months previously, had been desperately wounded in the 
lower part of the thigh, and who was then almost exhausted from 
the effect of the numerous consecutive abscesses, before he made 
any prescription he appealed to Heaven for a blessing upon the 
means he was about to employ for the relief of his illustrious 
patient. “ Notwithstanding, to give him courage and good hope, 
I told him,” says Pare, “ that I would quickly set him on foot, by 
the grace of God, and the physician’s and surgeon’s help. Having 
seen him, I went a walking into a garden, where I prayed to God 
that he would give me grace to cure him, and that he would give 
a blessing to our hands and medicaments, to combat against so 
many complicated maladies.” 
It is related that he attended without distinction the rich and 
the poor, and that he made no difference, in this respect, between 
the Huguenots and Catholics—a circumstance which speaks 
volumes of praise in favor of his humanity, when we recollect the 
deadly hatred that existed between these two classes of Christians, 
he himself espousing the cause of the former. 
Although naturally of an amiable disposition, his incessant oc- 
cupation, both mental and physical, rendered him at times irri- 
table ; but his anger always speedily subsided, and he never failed, 
when he thus betrayed his weakness, to ask pardon for the “ good 
old man,” the sobriquet by which he was universally known 
throughout Paris. 
In studying the works of Pard, the reader is struck with the air 
of vanity which pervades their pages, and, at times, is quite ob- 
trusive ; the pronoun I is of frequent occurrence, and it is very 
evident, in many places, that he even likes to magnify his self- 
importance ; but his vanity, after all, is perfectly innocent, for he 
never praises himself at the expense of others. On the contrary, 
he always speaks well of his brethren, and sometimes takes special 
pains to step out of his way to compliment them. lie was par- 
ticularly kind and considerate to young surgeons, especially those 21 
who had been his own pupils, doing everything in his power to 
promote their interest. 
Another salient trait in his character was industry. He was 
never idle ; he loved to work, and was never so happy or contented 
as when he was occupied upon some literary enterprise. From the 
age of twenty-eight to seventy-three he labored incessantly with 
his pen. In consequence of the early defects of his education, 
which his subsequent studies never entirely surmounted, he com- 
posed with difficulty, and many of his writings, especially those of 
his younger days, display an evident want of correct scholarship. 
A knowledge of the Latin language, then so common among the 
learned, he never acquired, and he was consequently obliged to 
avail himself of translations. 
Ilis cabinet of curiosities was large, and contained many rare 
and valuable specimens ; among others, a dissected and embalmed 
human body, a double foetus strongly resembling the Siamese twins, 
a uterine mole weighing nine pounds, and the skeleton of an ostrich 
prepared with his own hands. Like John Hunter, who seems to 
have inherited many of his great qualities, Pard possessed a great 
fondness for natural history, and omitted no opportunity to gratify 
his taste, for we find that his collection comprised contributions 
not only from Europe, but Asia and Africa. His library was ex- 
tensive and well selected, and he continued to make additions to it 
up to the time of his death. 
Notwithstanding his expensive outlays, Pare was rich. His lu- 
crative practice, his salary as first surgeon to the king, amounting 
to 600 livres a year, and the proceeds from the sale of his works, 
yielded him a large income, enabling him to support a hotel in one 
of the fashionable streets of Paris, and a handsome country residence 
in the neighborhood, where, in the midst of his family and his in- 
timate friends, he was wont to spend his nights and his Sabbaths, 
after the manner of some of our modern surgeons. Ilis disposition 
was eminently cheerful, and late in life the intervals of his study 
and toil were often beguiled by watching, with a childlike sim- 
plicity and delight, the movements and merrymaking of some little 
birds, probably canaries, which he had been instrumental in tam- 
ing. His gayety never forsook him ; even amid the horrors of war 
his pleasantry and mirthfulness served to mitigate the hardships 
of the soldiers. 
Pare had many friends, and no one ever enjoyed in a higher de- 
gree the favor of his sovereign, or the confidence of the public. 22 
The fact that he was successively surgeon-in-chief to four kings 
shows how well his moral and professional qualities were appreci- 
ated at the French court, in an age when virtue and learning were 
not always estimated according to their just value. Every one 
loved the “good old man,” and there were few among the great, 
the wealthy, and the refined who did not consider it a privilege to 
do him honor. His name throughout Paris, and even in the pro- 
vinces, was familiar to every one as a household word, and poets 
delighted to celebrate his virtues in their verses, some of which, 
with an amiable vanity, he inserted in his published works. 
But, although Par6 had many friends, he had also numerous 
enemies; enemies who hated him with a bitter hatred, and who 
continued their relentless opposition to him to the very borders of 
the grave. They could never forgive him for the influence which 
he had obtained over his sovereigns; for the revolution which he 
effected in the treatment of ’wounds and operations, by the appli- 
cation of the ligature to the suppression of hemorrhage ; for the 
admirable works which he had produced; and for the elevated 
social and professional position he enjoyed. They even accused 
him of having attempted the life of King Henry III. by poison, 
when, in 1575, that monarch labored under a violent attack of 
otalgia, accompanied by high delirium, which the ignorant and 
credulous were not slow to ascribe to the effects of some toxic agent, 
but which was no doubt due merely to an extension of the disease 
of the ear to the brain. The belief that the king had been foully 
dealt with was extensively prevalent, but Part) readily established 
his innocence by proving that he had applied no remedy except in 
the presence of the court physicians, several of whom, however, 
were extremely jealous of his influence, and treated him with the 
basest ingratitude. 
It would be folly to assert that Part) was altogether exempt from 
the failings of the age in which he lived. He would have been 
more than man if he could have freed himself completely from the 
shackles of superstition and credulity which formed such striking 
features in the human mind of the sixteenth century. 
He talks of “ monsters occasioned by the craft and subtlety of 
the devil,” and mentions “by what means the devil may deceive 
us.” “ Our minds,” says he, “ involved in the earthly habitation 
of our bodies, may be deluded by the devils divers ways, for they 
excel in purity and subtility of essence, and in the much use of 
things: they challenge a great pre-eminence, as the princes of this 23 
world, over all sublunary bodies. Wherefore it is no marvel if they, 
the teachers and parents of lies, should cast clouds and mists before 
our eyes from the beginning, and turn themselves into a thousand 
shapes of things and bodies, that by these jugglings and tricks they 
may shadow and darken men’s minds.” Such sentiments as these 
need not astonish us when it is remembered that Pare lived in the 
worst age of the Inquisition, when men almost everywhere believed 
in magic and witchcraft, when thousands of pilgrims annually vis- 
ited the Holy Land to expiate their real or imagined sins, and when 
the Great Reformer, in the quiet recesses of his study, did not hesi- 
tate to throw his inkstand into the face of the devil. Our only 
“ marvel” would be if he had been free from them. 
His hook “ of monsters and prodigies,” the twenty-fifth of John- 
son’s edition of his collected works, is a singular medley of erudi- 
tion, credulity, and superstition, sadly illustrative of the low stock 
of knowledge in the fifteenth century, and of the gross darkness 
which enslaved even the best minds of that period. In this hook 
he gives, among many other curious figures, that of an Italian 
woman who is said to have produced twenty children at two births, 
nine at the first and eleven at the second; and in the same paragraph 
he relates, apparently with the most perfect confidence in its truth- 
fulness, the still more remarkable case of the Countess of Virbos- 
tans, who brought forth at one accouchement thirty-five living 
children ! 
But, notwithstanding these unmistakable evidences of his weak- 
ness, it may confidently be asserted that he was far in advance of 
his time, both in his moral culture, in his professional attainments, 
and in his practical skill. These defects in his character were the 
necessary result of the age in which he lived, from whose tram- 
mels it was impossible for him wholly to free himself. They 
formed part and parcel of his mental constitution. 
There is hut one blot upon the name of Pare, a stain which, as 
an admirer of this great man, I would fain wipe out, hut to which 
my duty as an impartial historian compels me to advert. Strange 
to say, Pare himself records the fact, and that too, apparently, 
■without any idea of the blame likely to he attached to it by pos- 
terity. The circumstance to which I allude is simply this. At 
the siege of Iledin, in 1553, Pare, who had been sent with the 
army, seeing, to use his own language, “ about fourscore whores 
and wenches of the enemies,” engaged in drawing water, he prayed 
the commissary of artillery to discharge his cannon upon that 24 
roguish company; but “he made me,” says Pare, “much denial, 
answering me that such kind of people were not worth the powder 
they should waste. Again I prayed him to level the cannon, tell- 
ing him the more dead the fetver enemies, which he did, through 
my request, and at that shot fifteen or sixteen were killed and 
many hurt.” Whether this act was the result of mere wanton- 
ness, or of a fanatical idea that he would really be rendering his 
country an important service, by getting rid of this “ roguish 
company,” the mind equally revolts at it, and seeks in vain to re- 
concile it with the character which Pare had always sustained for 
piety and benevolence. 
As an offset to his conduct on this occasion, may be mentioned 
the following anecdote, which exhibits his humanity in the most 
beautiful light. I shall give it.in his own words. “A party,” 
says he, “ had gone out to attack a church where the peasants of 
the country had fortified themselves, hoping to get some booty of 
provisions; but they came back very soundly beaten, and one es- 
pecially, a captain-lieutenant of the company of the Duke de 
Rohan, returned with seven gashes on his head, the least of which 
penetrated through both tables of the skull, besides four sabre 
wounds in the arm, and one across the shoulder, which divided 
one-half of the shoulder-blade. When he was brought to the 
quarters, his master, the Duke, judged him to be so desperately 
wounded that he absolutely proposed, as they were to march by 
daylight, to dig a ditch for him, and throw him into it, saying 
that it was as well that the peasants should finish him. Put being 
moved Avitli pity, I told him,” says Pare, “that the captain might 
get cured. Many gentlemen of the company joined with me in 
begging that he might be allowed to go along with the baggage, 
since I was willing to dress and cure him. This was accordingly 
granted. I dressed him, and put him into a small, well-covered 
bed, in a cart drawn by one horse. I was at once physician, sur- 
geon, apothecary, and cook to him, and, thank God, I did cure 
him to the admiration of all the troops; and out of the first booty 
the men-at-arms gave me a crown apiece, and the archers half a 
crown each.” 
He was a man of the most incorruptible character, and, withal, 
most warmly attached to his friends, especially his sovereigns, whom 
he was ever ready to serve in everything that was just and honor- 
able, following them to camp, or remaining at home, as might be 
most conformable to their wishes. In those days the French court 25 
was constantly surrounded by political intriguers, who lost no 
opportunity to weaken the king’s influence with his subjects, or 
even to destroy his life. It was for the latter purpose that a power- 
ful princess tried to inveigle Pare into her criminal designs, 
although, knowing the purity of his character, she hesitated a 
long time before she ventured to reveal to him her wishes. His 
reply showed the nobility of his soul, at the same time that it ad- 
ministered a mostnvithering rebuke: “Madam,” said he, “the idea 
that you could think me capable of such an act, ought to make me 
weep the remainder of my days.” 
Pare spent the evening of his life in tranquillity and resignation, 
calmly and philosophically awaiting the approach of death. He 
was still, however, far from being idle, for we find him almost 
daily engaged in writing corrections on the margins of the fourth 
edition of his works, and in elaborating his treatise on fevers, 
which was discovered among his papers long after his death, which 
occurred on the 20tli of December, 1590, in the eighty-first year 
of his age. 
Of his domestic life very little is known. lie was twice mar- 
ried, the first union being without offspring, while the second was 
blessed with two daughters, of whose history, unfortunately, we 
are ignorant. In 1804, Bonaparte, then First Consul, full of just 
appreciation of all kinds of merit, instituted special inquiry at 
Laval with regard to the Pare family, in the hope of being able to 
render them some service, but without success. It was asserted as 
late as 1830 that the house once occupied by them at Amsterdam 
was still to be seen, with the inscription above the door, “ Here 
dwelled the descendants of Ambrose Parts,” but upon careful search 
being made, no such residence could be found. 
The father of French surgery was almost forgotten, or, if not 
forgotten, hardly ever mentioned, when, in 1812, the Medical So- 
ciety of Bordeaux proposed, as its prize, a eulogy upon him, which 
was awarded to Dr. Arimont, and it also projected the publication 
of a new edition of his works, which, however, was never accom- 
plished. Subsequently the Grand Council of Mavenne proposed 
the erection of a bronze statue to him at Laval, after a design by 
the celebrated artist, Mons. David; but whether this intention 
was ever carried out or not, my information does not enable me to 
say. 
Pare had two professional contemporaries who, in their respective 
spheres, occupied nearly the same exalted position as he did in 26 
surgery. The first was Fernelius, the restorer of medicine in the 
sixteenth century, and one of the first physicians who, after Galen, 
wrote well on the nature and cause of diseases; the other was 
Vcsalius, of Holland, still more celebrated as the father of modern 
anatomy. In Germany flourished Paracelsus, that compound of 
science, eccentricity, and charlatanism, which have made his name 
famous throughout the civilized world. These men were all dis- 
tinguished by peculiar traits of character which will render their 
names forever memorable in the history of human exploits. 
Fernelius, a Frenchman by birth, after having received a most 
thorough classical, mathematical, and philosophical education, 
studied medicine at Paris, and soon distinguished himself as a 
practitioner. Ilis business is reported to have annually yielded 
him ten or twelve thousand livres, and as he rapidly became rich, 
his enemies did not hesitate to accuse him of avarice. Ilis love of 
study was excessive. He worked habitually not less than nineteen 
hours out of the twenty-four ; and when one of his friends remon- 
strated with him on the folly of his conduct, by telling him that 
such labor and watching would shorten his life, his reply was: 
“ Longct quiescendi tempora fata dabunt.” Arnauld, the friend of 
Pascal, uttered a similar sentiment: “ Why don’t you rest some- 
times?” said his friend, Nicole, to him. “Rest! why should I rest 
here? haven’t I an eternity to rest in?” Fernelius was physician 
to Henry II. of France, and the author of numerous works, some 
of which passed through more than thirty editions. Bordeu, his 
great admirer, thus pithily sums up his character: “Fernelius,” 
says he, “appears like a great light penetrating the thick darkness 
of his age; never had so elegant an author adorned our chairs ; 
never had genius so gracefully and so ably written on medicine. 
France has had many great physicians, but none at all comparable 
to Fernelius.” 
The history of Yesalius is invested with a melancholy interest. 
Born at Brussels, in 1514, only five years later than Pare, he early 
commenced the study of medicine, and rapidly distinguished him- 
self by his passion for dissection, which, on account of the diffi- 
culty of procuring subjects, often involved him in many strange 
adventures. In that age there were no resurrectionists, a body of 
men so much valued at the present day. Vesalius and his students 
were obliged to dig up their own subjects, and even sometimes to 
climb the gibbet in pursuit of the mouldering carcass of the 
murderer, glad to get any material, however disgusting, to enlarge 27 
tlieir anatomical knowledge. Occasionally, as a great favor, crimi- 
nals were sent from the court and placed at the disposal of the 
anatomist, with the privilege of dispatching them with poison ! 
Such a statement would not be credited at the present day, if it 
was not vouched for by one of their own body, Fallopius: “ The 
prince,” he says, “ ordered a man to be given us, whom we killed 
in our fashion, and then dissected—quern nostro modo interfecimus et 
ilium anatomizavhnusl’ The article usually employed was opium, 
in the dose of about two drachms. On one occasion this quantity 
was administered without any effect, owing, as was supposed, to 
an attack of intermittent fever. The dose, however, being repeated 
soon after, the man died. How long this scientific “ burking” 
continued in vogue, history does not record. 
Vesalius, after having served for two years in the army in the 
capacity of physician and surgeon, was invited, at the age of 
twenty-five, to the chair of anatomy in the University of Pavia, 
where he remained until 1543. He then lectured successive! in 
the schools of Bologna and Pisa, and, in 1544, was appointed phy- 
sician to Charles V., an office which compelled him to take up his 
residence at Madrid. Here, in the midst of a most brilliant career, 
caressed by the court, and beloved by the people, he was seized 
with nostalgia, which so preyed upon his mind as to induce him to 
quit Spain. Anxious to conceal from the king the real cause of 
his distress, he based his resignation upon a desire to visit Jerusalem, 
in fulfilment of a vow made in early life. Having obtained an 
honorable discharge, he set out ujxm his journey, and in due time 
reached his destination. While there, engaged in contemplating 
the scenes of the Holy Land, and in studying the character of his 
fellow-pilgrims, he received the offer of the chair of anatomy in 
the University of Padua, rendered vacant by the death of his 
illustrious pupil, Gabriel Fallopius. Glad of an opportunity of 
returning once more to Italy, he embarked for Venice, but the 
vessel which carried him was wrecked off the Island of Zanthe, 
where, in October, 1564, at the age of fifty-eight, he perished from 
hunger and distress of mind. 
Until recently it was generally believed that the real cause of the 
visit of Vesalius to the Holy Land was an accident which befell 
him in examining the body of a Spanish nobleman, one of his 
patients, who died of some obscure disease of the heart. On expos- 
ing the chest, this organ, it was asserted, was found to palpitate, 
thus showing, to the great horror of all present, that life was not 28 
entirely extinct. The result was that Vesalius was accused of 
homicide, and, but for the interposition of the king, who com- 
muted his sentence to a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he would 
have been consigned to an ignominious death. 
Unfortunately for this story, whose character largely partakes of 
the romantic, it is entirely destitute of truth. Mons. Burggraeve, 
Professor of Anatomy in the University of Gand, in his work on 
the life and writings of Vesalius, published in 1841, has proved the 
whole charge to he the merest tiction, fabricated by the professional 
enemies of this great man for the purpose of wounding his feelings 
and casting reproach upon his reputation. The real motives which 
induced him to visit the Holy Land remain involved in mystery. 
Some pretend that the nostalgia of which he complained was a 
mere pretext to escape from a court for which he had no respect, 
and in which he was surrounded by jealous and unscrupulous 
rivals: others assert that his wife, who seems to have been a second 
Xantippe, was the cause of it. However this may be, no one can 
help regretting the sad fate which awaited him on his passage 
home, and which deprived the world of the services of so illustri- 
ous an anatomist at a time when they were so much needed. 
Vesalius was the first physician, after the commencement of the 
Reformation, who had the boldness to engage in human dissections, 
and to make an effort to free anatomical science from the yoke im- 
posed upon it by the ancients. Until his time the authority of 
Galen and others was regarded as of far greater value than the ob- 
servation of nature. The man who had the courage to think and 
act for himself was viewed as a heretic, fit only for the stake. Ve- 
salius, despising the writings of his predecessors, devoted himself 
incessantly to human dissections, and before he was thirty years of 
age published his great work on anatomy, illustrated by numerous 
plates, engraved on wood, from drawings made by the most accom- 
plished artists. A new edition of this immortal production, com- 
prising his treatise on surgery, was issued under the supervision of 
Boerhaave and Albinus, at Leyden, in 1725, in two splendid folio 
volumes. 
It was this great work which Senac characterized as the dis- 
covery of a new world, and to which the illustrious Haller, in a 
burst of enthusiasm, applied the epithet “immortal”; a work 
which, he declares, was so complete as to render effete nearly 
everything that had been previously written upon anatomy. 
The city of Brussels, proud of having given birth to so illustrious 29 
a man, one who has conferred so much honor upon his native 
country, erected, some years ago, in one of her public squares, a 
monument to Yesalius; and every student of anatomy is acquainted 
with an engraving, lately published, which represents him as being 
engaged, in the midst of his pupils, in the earnest delivery of a 
lecture upon a dead body. 
With these illustrious men Paracelsus had few points in common. 
To talents of a high order, and unquestionable science, he added all 
the elements and practices of a daring, impudent quack. His very 
name, in fact, savors strongly of charlatanism. His signature, 
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus, of Hohen- 
lieim, written in full, must have excited the wonder and admira- 
tion of many a country man, and served as a flaming advertisement 
to his boasted skill in the cure of diseases. Born at Einsiedeln, 
Switzerland, in 1493, he already enjoyed great fame when Pare 
entered the profession. In 1526, at the suggestion of the learned 
Erasmus, who had been his patient, and who had conceived the most 
unbounded respect for his talents and skill, he was appointed Pro- 
fessor of Medicine and Surgery in the University ot Basle; and 
his first official act was to light some sulphur in a brazen chafing 
dish, and to throw into the flame the works of Galen, Rhazes, and 
Avicenna, exclaiming, “Sic vos ardebitis in gehenna!” This act, 
together with the singularity of his manners, and the boldness of 
his denunciations of the doctrines of his predecessors, the most en- 
lightened of whom he declared did not know so much as his shoe 
latchets, rendered him a great favorite with the students. Ilis 
popularity, however, was of short duration; for a dispute arising 
between him and the trustees of the school respecting the amount 
of his salary, he resigned his chair in less than a year, and thence- 
forth pursued a nomadic, dissolute life, wandering about from village 
to village, and spending whole nights and days in drinking with the 
lowest and most debauched persons. In short, he became what, at 
the present day, would be called a rowdy. Amid all this dissipa- 
tion, however, he still maintained his reputation by the occasional 
achievement of extraordinary cures. He boasted that he had in- 
vented an elixir by which he could ward off all bodily ailments 
and indefinitely prolong his life ; but while thus vaunting his own 
praises, he was seized with a fever, of which, in a few days, he died, 
in the forty-eighth year of his age, thus falsifying his silly and 
wicked pretensions. 
Paracelsus, notwithstanding his dissipations and his many char- 30 
latanries, rendered important service to science. He was unques- 
tionably an able chemist and an excellent practitioner, as is proved 
by the fact that lie made a number of important discoveries, among 
others that of antimony, and that he effected many brilliant cures. 
Ilis works, which were published after his death in ten quarto 
volumes, show him to have been a man of great industry and eru- 
dition. His treatise on surgery was, in many respects, much in 
advance of his age. Von Helmont regarded him as a god-send, 
endowed with vast knowledge and skill, “ the forerunner of true 
medicine,” and “ the jewel of all Germanywhile Zimmerman 
declares him to have been a man of the most vulgar tastes and 
practices, who “ lived like a hog, looked like a carter, and found 
his chief pleasure in the society of the lowest and most debauched 
of the rabble.” 
In regard to the treatment of wounds the remarks of Paracelsus 
show him to have been a man of a high order of intellect and a most 
able practitioner. After the parts were properly adjusted, “ Nature, 
the physician of wounds,” as he called her, “ must do the rest. 
Warily,” says the eccentric philosopher, in his “Great Surgery,” pub- 
lished in 1536, “ warily must the surgeon take heed not to remove or 
interfere with Nature’s balsam, but protect and defend it in its work- 
ing and virtue. It is the nature of flesh to possess in itself an innate 
balsam, which healeth wounds. Every limb has its own healing in 
itself; Nature has her own doctor in every limb; whereas every 
chirurgeon should know that it is not he, but Nature, who heals. 
What do wounds need ? Nothing. Inasmuch as the flesh grows 
from within outwards, and not from without inwards; so the sur- 
gery of wounds is a mere defensive, to prevent Nature from suffer- 
ing any accident from without in order that she may proceed 
unchecked in her operations.” 
The balsam here referred to is what is now known—since the time 
of John Hunter—as nothing but the lymph, fibrin, or plasma poured 
out upon the raw surface of wounds, so intimately concerned in the 
process of repair—and the injunction so earnestly and forcibly laid 
down not to disturb or meddle with the parts was the full fore- 
shadowing of the rest and quietude of the injured structures so 
much and so justly insisted upon at the present day by all en- 
lightened and scientific practitioners. 
If wTecast a retrospective glance at Great Britain, it will be found 
that she had not one great physician or surgeon during the profes- 
sional lifetime of Ambrose Par<5. Linacre, who died in 1524, after 31 
having taken an active part in the institution of the Royal College 
of Physicians of London, had given a salutary impulse to medi- 
cine ; but that impulse was of short duration, for the mantel which 
he had so long and so gracefully worn did not find one worthy 
successor. He himself, indeed, left no original additions to the 
medical literature of his country. His principal contribution was 
a translation of the works of Galen into Latin, highly esteemed for 
the purity and elegance of its diction. lie was physician to Henry 
VII. and Henry VIII., founded lectureships in physic at Oxford 
and Cambridge, and rendered various other important services to 
medicine, for which his name will always be held in respectful re- 
membrance by Englishmen. 
Gradually, however, new light began to break in, and Great 
Britain effectually aroused from her heavy slumber. The soil which 
had so long been fallow now produced abundantly, beginning with 
William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, 
and Richard Wiseman, a man of real science, a close observer, an 
able writer, and the greatest military surgeon of the day. These 
illustrious savans opened, as with the magician’s wand, the foun- 
tains of physiological, medical, and surgical knowledge, and thus 
imparted an impulse to the healing art, the salutary effects of 
which cannot be too highly appreciated. 
In Italy, during the latter period of the career of Pare, flourished 
Taliacotius, the great autoplastic surgeon, celebrated for his skill 
in making new noses, lips, and ears; a man of great science, far in 
advance of his time. The manner in which he perfonned his ope- 
rations was much misrepresented, many alleging that the supple- 
mental structures were borrowed from the arm or breast of another 
person. The English poet, Butler, sarcastically alludes to the cir- 
cumstance by observing, in his Iludibras, 
“That when the parent stock died out 
Off dropped the sympathetic snout.” 
The of Pare affords many points for reflection. It de- 
monstrates, in the first place, the power of ambition and genius 
over obscurity of birth, poverty, and defective education; and, 
secondly, the rewards which follow a life of virtue and of steady 
devotion to one particular pursuit. His motto, afterwards trans- 
ferred to the title-page of his works, was “ labor improbus omnia 
vincit,” and nobly and faithfully did he carry out its behests. Ho 
man ever worked harder than he, or with an eye more single to 32 
the advancement and honor of the profession which he so ardently 
loved, and to which, early in life, he resolved to dedicate his whole 
soul and service. Ilis toils and his fidelity, continued through a 
period of upwards of sixty years, have earned for him a conspicuous 
niche in the temple of fame, and the glorious title, accorded to 
him by the common consent of posterity, of the Father of French 
Surgery. To Swgoons a&i Physicians. 
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