BEFORE AND AFTER LISTER 155 



Gunpowder, though long known, had been used in war- 

 fare to any large extent for only a few decades. The 

 belief, shared fully by Pare himself, that such wounds 

 were "poisoned/' was universal. Treatment was directed 

 to the destruction of the supposed poison by pouring 

 boiling oil and hot pitch into such wounds. In the heat 

 of his anger at the inhumanity of the new weapons he 

 says in his preface to Book XL, "Of wounds made by 

 gunshot and other fiery Engines and all sorts of Wea- 

 pons" : 3 



I think the deviser of this deadly Engine hath this 

 for his recompence that his name should be hidden 

 by the darkness of perpetual ignorance as not merit- 

 ing for this his most pernitious Invention Any Men- 

 tion from Posterity. 



Yet with a curious inconsistency he immediately gives 

 the name of a German monk as the "deviser." 



Listen to his quaint story of how he discovered that 

 gunshot wounds were not poisoned. In 1536 



it chanced on a time that by reason of the multitude 

 that were hurt I wanted this Oil ["oyl of Elders 

 Scalding hot with a little Treacle mixed therewith"]. 

 Now because there were some few left to be dressed 

 I was forced . . . that I might not leave them un- 

 drest to apply a digestive made of the yolk of an 

 egg, Oil of Roses and Turpentine. I could not sleep 

 all that night for I was troubled in mind, and the 

 dressing of the precedent day (which I judged unfit), 

 troubled my thoughts ; and I feared that the next day 

 I should find them dead, or at the point of death by 

 the poison of the wounds. . . . Therefore I rose 



3 The Works of that Famous Chirurgeon Ambrose Parey, 

 translated by Th. Johnson, London, 1678, p. 270. 



