202 INTERNAL MEDICINE 



calls him, in declining the task of entering upon so full a life was 

 born about 1503. He began as an apprentice to an operating barber 

 and hernia specialist. He had no more "education" than Par6 

 or Wiirtz, and he was spared the misfortune of a speculative in- 

 tellect. He picked up some anatomy, educated himself by obser- 

 vation, experience, and manipulation, and as a simple operator 

 or "Master," won considerable renown. As upright and modest 

 as Pare 1 , though he never attained Park's high social position, he 

 submitted to call in the physician, and took his quiet revenge in 

 the remark that the physicians did not know enough to distinguish 

 good surgery from bad. Nicaise says roundly, "No surgeon made 

 such discoveries as Franco; for hernia, stone, and cataract he did 

 much more than Pare"." Whether from incapacity or the brutality 

 of habit, during the Middle Ages and down even to the middle of 

 the seventeenth century, it had been the custom in operating for 

 hernia to sacrifice one or even both testicles, an abuse against which 

 Franco took successful precautions, for he proved that the canal 

 could be closed and the ring sutured without castration. In irre- 

 ducible inguinal hernia he distinguishes between opening and not 

 opening the sac, and describes adhesions of sac and intestine. 

 From him, indeed, dates the rational operation for strangulated 

 hernia, and in strangulated scrotal hernia he founded the method. 

 Pare", and after him Petit, condemned the ablation of the testicle, 

 which procedure, however, many surgeons thought quite good 

 enough for priests; and Par6 gives credit to Franco for these 

 advances, though Fabricius does not even mention them. On the 

 interesting subject of plastic operations, which attained a remark- 

 able vogue in the Middle Ages, and were but restored by Taglia- 

 cozzi, I have not now time to speak. 



The very eminence of Ambroise Par6 encourages if it does not 

 command me to be content with a few words of commemoration. 

 Himself of humble origin, he won for surgery in France a social 

 place and respect it had never attained before. Born in 1517, he 

 became a barber's apprentice in the H6tel Dieu, whence he fol- 

 lowed the campaign of Francis I against Charles V. As he could 

 not write a Latin treatise, his admission to St. Come was of course 

 opposed by the Faculty; but Pare* stoutly declared that the ver- 

 nacular tongue was essential to the progress of medicine. Riolan 

 the elder, who had taken part in the opposition, wrote a tract on 

 the other side, in 1577, with the following insolent title: Ad im- 

 pudentiam quorundam Chirurgorum qui medicis aequari et chirur- 

 giam publick profitere volunt pro dignitate veteri medicinae apologia 

 philosophica. Now at this time Par was 60 years of age and sur- 

 geon to the King. If in comparison with Pare", Haeser treats Franco 

 somewhat slightingly, and if in some respects Par6 may not be 



