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Introductory Note
Introductory Note
Ambroise Pare was born in the village of Bourg-Hersent, 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 surgeon, 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-surgeon in 1541.
In Pare`s time the armies of Europe were not regularly equipped with a
medical service. The great nobles were accompanied by their private
physicians; the common soldiers doctored themselves, or used the services of
barber-surgeons and quacks who accompanied the army as adventurers. "When 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
cauterizing after amputation. In answer, 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. Pare`s own
achievements are recorded with modest satisfaction: "I dressed him, and God
healed him," is the refrain. Pare died in Paris in December, 1590.
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