INTRODUCTORY NOTE 



AMBROTSE PARE was born in the village of B our g-Her sent, near 

 Laval, in Maine, France, about 1510. He was trained as a barber- 

 surgeon at a time when a barber-surgeon was inferior to a sur- 

 geon, and the professions of surgeon and physician were kept 

 apart by the law of the Church that forbade a physician to shed 

 blood. Under whom he served his apprenticeship is unknown, 

 but by 1533 he was in Paris, where he received an appointment 

 as house surgeon at the Hotel Dieu. After three or four years 

 of valuable experience in this hospital, he set up in private practise 

 in Paris, but for the next thirty years he was there only in the 

 intervals of peace; the rest of the time he followed the army. 

 He became a master barber- surge on in 1541. 



In Pa re's time the armies of Europe were not regularly 

 equipped with a medical service. The great nobles were accom- 

 panied by their private physicians; the common soldiers doctored 

 themselves, or used the services of barber-surgeons and quacks 

 who accompanied the army as adventurers. "W hen Pare joined 

 the army," says Paget, "he went simply as a follower of Colonel 

 Montejan, having neither rank, recognition, nor regular payment. 

 His fees make up in romance for their irregularity: a cask of 

 wine, fifty double ducats and a horse, a diamond, a collection of 

 crowns and half-crowns from the ranks, other 'honorable presents 

 and of great value' ; from the King himself, three hundred crowns, 

 and a promise he would never let him be in want; another 

 diamond, this time from the finger of a duchess: and a soldier 

 once offered a bag of gold to him." 



When Pare was a man of seventy, the Dean of the Faculty of 

 Medicine in Paris made an attack on him on account of his use 

 of the ligature instead of cauterising after amputation. In an- 

 swer, Pare appealed to his successful experience, and narrated 

 the "Journeys in Diverse Places" here printed. This entertaining 

 volume gives a vivid picture, not merely of the condition of 

 surgery in the sixteenth century, but of the military life of the 

 time; and reveals incidentally a personality of remarkable vigor 

 and charm. Pore's oivn achievements are recorded with modest 

 satisfaction: "I dressed him, and God healed him" is the refrain. 

 Pare died in Paris in December, 1590. 



8 



