NATURE 



49 



THURSDAY, MAY 19, i^ 



AMBROISE PARE, SURGEON TO THE KING. 



Ambroise Par^ and his Times, 15 10-1590. By Stephen 

 Paget. Illustrated. (New York and London : G. P. 

 Putnam's Sons ; The Knickerbocker Press, 1897.) 



ON October i, 1889, Mr. Rickman J. Godlee 

 delivered the introductory address in the Faculty 

 of Medicine at University College, London. He chose 

 for his subject a comparison of the methods of Am- 

 broise Pard and those of a surgeon of the present 

 time. This address, according to Mr. Paget's preface, 

 was the moving cause of this present work. Seldom 

 has it fallen to our lot to read a better bit of literary 

 work, or a more stimulating biography. The author has 

 extracted from the larger works of Malgaigue, Le Paul- 

 mier, and others the most salient points in Pare's life, 

 and pieced them together in such a way that one has a 

 real view of the life of the most celebrated surgeon of 

 the sixteenth century. He has added to our literary 

 medical store by a new translation of the "Journeys in 

 Diverse Places," which, for faithful rendering and for 

 the preservation of the quaint phraseology of the period, 

 might have been done by Thomas Johnson himself, he 

 who translated " The Works of that Famous Chirurgeon 

 Ambrose Parey " into the vigorous and picturesque 

 language of the earlier part of the seventeenth century. 

 The interest to the modern general reader consists in 

 the vivid picture of life as painted by one who saw it 

 under every possible circumstance in the sixteenth 

 century, and to the yet young practitioner, inasmuch as 

 the surgery of Pare was practically the art of but yester- 

 day vmtil the total revolution, caused in it by the dis- 

 coveries of Lister, had changed it to what it is now. 

 Pare used to be mostly remembered at opening lectures 

 as Hannibal was in Juvenal's time, " Ut pueris placeas 

 et declamatio fias," and his memory was called to mind 

 chiefly as the inventor of the ligature of arteries. Now 

 this he did not, but only reintroduced the practice which 

 had been restored about a century before by the German 

 school of surgery, and lost sight of in the meanwhile. He 

 was, however, the first to use the ligature in amputation 

 wounds. He found out, by a scarcity of boiling oil on 

 one occasion, that a mild application was infinitely to 

 be preferred to that dreadfully severe one, and so set 

 the practice of a more rational treatment of gunshot 

 wounds. But Pare added little to the actual knowledge 

 or practice of his art ; his chief fame is due to the 

 admirably clear writings he has left of that art as he 

 practised it, and to the straightforward honest life he led 

 in the midst of the most horribly cruel, licentious and 

 debased surroundings it is possible to imagine. It is 

 generally stated that Pare was a Protestant, and one of 

 the very few who were spared at the St. Bartholomew 

 massacre ; but we think Mr. Paget has shown that there is 

 good cause to believe that he was, nominally at least, a 

 Gallican Romanist of the tolerant sort. We have selected 

 a few extracts showing the conditions of war as Pare 

 NO. 1490, VOL. 58] 



met with them. In the first journey, viz. to Turin, i 537, 

 after the taking of the city, he writes : — 



" We entered pell-mell into the city, and passed over 

 the dead bodies and some not yet dead, hearing them 

 cry under our horses' feet, and they made my heart ache 

 to hear them. And truly I repented I had left Paris to 

 see such a pitiful spectacle. Being come into the city, 

 I entered into a stable, thinking to lodge my own and 

 my man's horse, and found four dead soldiers and three 

 propped against the wall, their features all changed, and 

 they neither heard, saw, nor spoke, and their clothes 

 were still smouldering where the gunpowder had burned 

 them. As I was looking at them with pity, there came 

 an old soldier, who asked me if there was any way to 

 cure them. I said no. And then he went up to them 

 and cut their throats, gently, and without ill-will toward 

 them. Seeing this great cruelty, I told him he was a 

 villain : he answered me, he prayed God, when he should 

 be in such a plight he might find some one to do the 

 same for him, that he should not linger in misery." 



Again, on page 71 is an appreciation of the Spaniard 

 of that time, which is the same that the English had, 

 and is curiously like some of the denunciations one reads 

 in the State papers and writings of the latter part of the 

 reign of Elizabeth : it is as follows. After describing 

 the departure of the Imperials from Metz, he goes on : — 



" M. de Guise had their dead buried and their sick 

 people treated. Also the enemy left behind them, in 

 the abbey of St. Arnoul, many of their wounded soldiers, 

 whom they could not possibly take with them. M. de 

 Guise sent them victuals enough, and ordered me and 

 other surgeons to go dress and physick them, which 

 we did with a good will ; and I think they would not 

 have done the like for our men. For the Spaniard is 

 very cruel, treacherous and inhuman, and so far enemy 

 of all nations : which is proved by Lopez the Spaniard, 

 and Benzo of Milan, and others who have written the 

 history of America and the W^est Indies ; who have had 

 to confess that the cruelty, avarice, blasphemies and 

 wickedness of the Spaniards have utterly estranged the 

 poor Indians from the religion that these Spaniards 

 professed. And all write that they are of less worth 

 than the idolatrous Indians for their cruel treatment of 

 these Indians." 



As pointing out the immense slaughter in the battles 

 of those times, note the account of the battle of Dreux, 

 1562 : — 



" The day after I came, I would go to the camp where 

 the battle had been to see the dead bodies. I saw for 

 a long league round the earth all covered. They esti- 

 mated it at 25,000 men or more, and it was all done in 

 less than two hours." 



We believe that no modern battle of a like duration 

 has produced such a loss. One more extract, and we 

 have done ; it relates to the evacuation of Havre by the 

 English in 1563. 



" When our artillery came before the walls of the 

 town, the English within the walls killed some of our 

 men and several pioneers who were making gabions ; 

 and, seeing they were so wounded that there was no 

 hope of curing them, their comrades stripped them and 

 put them living inside the gabions, which served to fill 

 them up. When the English saw they could not with- 

 stand our attack because they were hard hit by sick- 

 ness, and especially by the plague, they surrendered. 

 The king gave them ships to return to England, very 



