512 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



with the surgeon proper or " surgeon of the long robe " in the fields of 

 minor surgery and both ranked far below the physician. In fact, sur- 

 gery was largely abandoned to a class of ignorant barbers, bathers and 

 bone-setters. Many operators were itinerant, going from city to city 

 and frequently limiting their work to one or two kinds of operation, 

 as that for cataract, or stone, or hernia. Military surgery without 

 anesthesia or antisepsis was a horror of rough and ready emergency 

 operations with boiling oil or heated iron as styptic and cautery, a 

 torture beyond imagination. Indeed, to get an idea of the horrors of 

 surgery in the lazaretto of the battle field even down to the year 1812, 

 the date of Napoleon's descent upon Moscow, one needs but to read 

 Tolstoy's work " War and Peace." 



Thus we find the stage set for Vesalius and Pare, who with Hunter, 

 though he entered somewhat later, laid the foundation, which, when 

 anesthesia and antisepsis were added in the nineteenth century, gave 

 surgery its right to claim a scientific basis. Vesalius, occupying a chair 

 of surgery at Padua, developed anatomy as an exact observational sci- 

 ence ; indeed he may be considered as the founder of modern anatomical 

 research. This was his great work ; this and his influence in weakening 

 the old speculative medicine and in establishing the principles of the 

 scientific method. It was not an immediate influence, for upon the 

 publication (1543) of his Pabrica Humani Corporis "the wrath of 

 intrenched conservatism descended upon him " and he was forced to 

 leave Padua, but his work was not in vain, for it hastened the develop- 

 ment of surgical science and gave to anatomy the impetus necessary for 

 its development as an observational science. 



Ambroise Pare (1510-1590) began life as an humble barber-surgeon, and 

 ended as the greatest surgical authority of Europe and the best loved man in* 

 France. (Mumford.) 



Why the greatest authority? Because he went through the world 

 with his eyes open. Why the best beloved? Because of his own 

 unaided efforts he did away with more actual pain than has perhaps 

 any other single individual except the discoverer of anesthesia. His 

 methods were those of the practical clinician — observation as the basis 

 of deduction unhampered by tradition. The story is told that Pare in 

 his first military campaign followed the old custom which prescribed 

 the use of boiling oil for all wounds. But after one severe engagement 

 the oil gave out and he used, fearful of the consequences, a simple oint- 

 ment. To his surprise he found that the wounds so treated healed more 

 rapidly than under the old treatment. On this basis of simple observa- 

 tion and sound reasoning, he combated, against great opposition, the 

 old treatment and established simple rules for the care of wounds. So 

 also was it with the ligation of vessels after amputation. The custom 

 had been to cauterize with the red-hot iron, the effect of which both 

 physically and mentally it is not difficult to imagine. Pare reasoned 



