Ambroise Paré

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Paré, Ambroise (c.1510-90). ‘The father of modern surgery’ and of military medicine, Paré was born of humble parents at Bourg Hersent in France, studied as a barber-surgeon, and joined the army in 1537. Although he became surgeon to four French kings, Henri II, François II, Charles IX, and Henri III, Paré is best known for developing techniques for improving the battlefield amputation of limbs, increasingly necessary as gunshot wounds became more frequent. It was believed that such wounds were poisonous, and that the stumps of amputated limbs should be cauterized with a hot iron or boiling oil. Paré noticed that many of the patients thus treated died of shock and revived the ancient practice of tying off veins and arteries rather than cauterizing them. He treated the limb with a mixture of egg yolk, oil of roses, and turpentine, and also applied similar poultices to gunshot wounds. Paré concluded that these were not inherently poisonous, but that infection was carried into them from the outside. He recommended débridement (opening and cleaning of the wound) to assist the process of healing, a technique revived with spectacular success during the Falklands war of 1982.

In several other respects Paré was ahead of his time. He suspected that flies carried disease, experimented with artificial limbs and eyes, and used astringent red wine as an antiseptic. His Method of Treating Gunshot Wounds (1545) became an important textbook.

— Richard Holmes

The French military surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) restored and reformed the surgical art through his practice, writings, and personal leadership to earn the sobriquet "father of modern surgery."

Ambroise Paré was born in Bourg-Hersent (now absorbed into Laval). His father seems to have been barber-surgeon to the Comte de Laval. His elder brother and his brother-in-law were also barber-surgeons, under whom he may have served his apprenticeship. From 1532 to 1537 Paré served under the surgeons of the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris as a clinical assistant studying anatomy and surgery. This experience, unusual for the times, Paré acknowledged was of the greatest importance to his future career.

Unable to pay for licensure, Paré joined his patron, René de Montejan, a colonel general of infantry, as military surgeon in the French expedition of 1537 to Turin. In his first campaign he realized that, on the basis of the poisonous nature of gunpowder, the accepted method of cauterizing gunshot wounds with boiling oil was destructive, and he therefore substituted more humane treatment.

On the death of Montejan in 1539, Paré returned to Paris now able to pay his fees to be accepted into the Company of Barber-Surgeons. A few months later he married Jeanne Mazelin, daughter of a wine merchant, by whom he had three children.

In Paris, Paré visited the celebrated physician Jacques du Bois (Sylvius), who encouraged him to write on his experiences with gunshot wounds. However, the outbreak of war with Spain saw Paré accompanying the Vicomte de Rohan on campaigns before Perpignan, in the Hainaut, and before Landrecies. This delayed the completion of his first book, The Method of Curing Wounds Made by Arquebus and Other Firearms (1545). Written in the vernacular instead of Latin, the book had a practicality and sound common sense that made it instantly popular and its author famous. Thereafter books on his experiences appeared in almost every decade of his long life. His Anatomy, based on Vesalius, contained his important contribution to midwifery, reintroducing podalic version. His texts on surgery reintroduced the ligature in amputation. These many writings were gathered together in his Works (1575), which disseminated his teachings throughout the world.

Paré served in many campaigns, and beginning with Henry II, was surgeon to no less than four successive kings of France. With Vesalius, Daza Chaçon, and Jean Chapelain, he attended at the tragic death of Henry II, killed in a joust with the Comte Montgomery which eventually split France in civil war. Paré cited the case to establish the fact that the brain can be injured without fracture of the skull. His last piece of writing, The Apology and Voyages, is a supreme literary achievement and unique historical document in which he defends his methods. Paré was the emancipator of surgery, whose modesty and humanitarianism is remembered by his aphorism, "Je le pensay, et Dieu le guarit" (I dressed it, and God healed it).

Further Reading

The Apologie and Treatise of Ambroise Paré, edited by Geoffrey Keynes (1952), contains the Voyages and other important excerpts. Two excellent but rare biographies of Paré are Stephen Paget and Francis Packard, Ambroise Paré and His Times, 1510-1590 (1897), and Life and Times of Ambroise Paré, 1510-1590, edited and translated by Francis Packard (1921). A recent study is Wallace Hamby, Ambroise Paré: Surgeon of the Renaissance (1967). A superb bibliography containing several important essays is Janet Doe, A Bibliography of the Works of Ambroise Paré (1937).

Paré, Ambroise (c.1510-1590). French doctor and medical writer. From Laval Paré moved to Paris where, without a formal humanist education, he won recognition for his skill as a surgeon, and served four kings. One of the founders of modern science, he based his method on observation and a strong belief in God. He is considered to be the father of military surgery—he advocated unguents rather than boiling oil to cure wounds and the use of the tourniquet after amputation. His work, written in accessible French, reveals the Renaissance mind which looks afresh at monsters and science. His Œuvres complètes were published in 1575.

[Keith Cameron]