JOURNEYS IN DIVERSE PLACES 11 



the city, to give example and fear to the Emperor's soldiers, 

 not to be so rash and mad as to wish to hold such places 

 against so great an army. 



The soldiers within the castle, seeing our men come on 

 them with great fury, did all they could to defend them- 

 selves, and killed and wounded many of our soldiers with 

 pikes, arquebuses, and stones, whereby the surgeons had all 

 their work cut out for them. Now I was at this time a 

 fresh- water soldier; I had not yet seen wounds made by 

 gunshot at the first dressing. It Is true I had read in 

 John de Vigo, first book, Of Wounds in General, eighth 

 chapter, that wounds made by firearms partake of vene- 

 nosity, by reason of the powder; and for their cure he bids 

 you cauterise them with oil of elders scalding hot, mixed 

 with a little treacle. And to make no mistake, before I 

 would use the said oil, knowing this was to bring great 

 pain to the patient, I asked first before I applied it, what 

 the other surgeons did for the first dressing; which was to 

 put the said oil, boiling well, into the wounds, with tents and 

 setons; wherefore I took courage to do as they did. At 

 last my oil ran short, and I was forced instead thereof to 

 apply a digestive made of the yolks of eggs, oil of roses, 

 and turpentine. In the night I could not sleep in quiet, 

 fearing some default in not cauterising, that I should find 

 the wounded to whom I had not used the said oil dead from 

 the poison of their wounds ; which made me rise very early 

 to visit them, where beyond my expectation I found that 

 those to whom I had applied my digestive medicament had 

 but little pain, and their wounds without inflammation or 

 swelling, having rested fairly well that night ; the others, to 

 whom the boiling oil was used, I found feverish, with great 

 pain and swelling about the edges of their wounds. Then 

 I resolved never more to burn thus cruelly poor men with 

 gunshot wounds. 



While I was at Turin, I found a surgeon famed above all 

 others for his treatment of gunshot wounds; into whose 

 favour I found means to insinuate myself, to have the recipe 

 of his balm, as he called it, wherewith he dressed gunshot 

 wounds. And he made me pay my court to him for two 

 years, before I could possibly draw the recipe from him. 



