August 17, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



257 



The stone was the size of a hen's egg, and 

 the patient subsequently made a good re- 

 covery. 



Colot was appointed lithotomist to the 

 Hotel Dieu of Paris in 1556. He had learnt 

 what is known as the ' Marian operation ' 

 from an itinerant quack, and he practiced 

 the method with, it is said, much success. 

 The office and the secret descended to his 

 son and to his grandson. 



In the great Metropolitan Hospitals — in 

 St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's for 

 instance — persons were at one time specially 

 appointed for the purpose of cutting for 

 stone. 



John Bamber, who lived during the reigns 

 of William III., Queen Anne, George I. and 

 George II. , was the last of the special lithot- 

 omists at St. BarfSiolomew's. He resigned 

 his office in 1730 and his duties were trans- 

 ferred to the surgeons of the hospital, who 

 were specially paid a small stipend each 

 year as lithotomist until 1868. Bamber's 

 portrait by Verelst may be seen at Hatfield 

 House, and Lord Salisbury inherits some 

 portion of his property through an heiress 

 of this line who married a Marquess of Salis- 

 bury. 



At St; Thomas's Hospital certain of the 

 surgeons were specially appointed to cut 

 for stone, but before the year 1730 there 

 appears to have been a special ' surgeon for 

 the stone,' and the first of these was James 

 Molins, who held a similar office at St. 

 Bartholomew's. There is, indeed, no end 

 to the matters of interest in the history of 

 our art. 



The great French surgeon, Guy de Chau- 

 liac, who was born about 1300 A. D., studied 

 at the three most famous centers of learning 

 of that time — Bologna for anatomy, Paris 

 for its surgery, and Montpelier for medicine. 

 He travelled much, but finally settled at 

 Avignon, where he became physician in 

 succession to Pope Clement VI., and after- 

 wards to Pope Innocent and Urban. It 



was in Avignon that he wrote his ' Great 

 Surgery,' and in a special chapter of this 

 work he records opinions which have an 

 application even in the circumstances of 

 our own times. " Formerly," he says, " all 

 medical writers were both physicians and 

 surgeons — that is to say, well educated 

 men ; but since then surgery has become a 

 separate branch and fallen into the hands 

 of mechanics." 



It is interesting to find from Guy that 

 there were in his day exponents of that 

 modern foolishness called ' Christian Sci- 

 ence. ' These Guy describes as ' consisting 

 of women and many fools.' They refer 

 the sick of all diseases to the saints, saying : 



Le Seigneur me I'a donn^ ainsi qu'il Lni a plu. Le 

 Seigneur me I'ostera quand il Lui plaira, le nom dn 

 Seigneur soit benit. Amen. 



As a striking instance of my thesis I may 

 take the great French military surgeon, 

 Ambroise Pare. "We know his title to fame 

 in substituting the ligature of arteries for 

 the use of the hot iron in the arrest of haem- 

 orrhage. We know also the story of how 

 he forbade the barbarous practice of pour- 

 ing boiling oil into gunshot wounds, due to 

 the then prevailing belief that these wounds 

 were poisoned, a belief revived with almost 

 every war, even the latest war in South 

 Africa. Pare had been apprenticed to a pro- 

 vincial barber at the age of 9. Soon after- 

 wards he came to Paris, attended lectures at 

 the Faculty of Medicine, and gained admis- 

 sion to the Hotel Dieu. He lived there as a 

 dresser for three years, ' seeing and knowing 

 a great variety of diseases constantly being 

 brought there.' He was only 19 when he 

 accompanied the King, Frangois I., into 

 Provence to meet the army of Charles V. 

 He was attached to the Courts of four Kings 

 of France, and, although a Huguenot, was 

 spared at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew 

 by the direct intervention of Charles IX. 



It is interesting to learn that Dionis, more 

 than one hundred years after Park's time. 



