What were Ambroise Pare's accomplishments?

Answer 1

Pare discovered a new way to seal arteries and blood vessels after amputation. The traditional way was to use a hot iron to cauterise them, but Pare used silk ligatures. Although this stop the bleeding, people in the Renaissance didn't know about germs and infection, and the need to sterilise equipment, and so the wound which the ligatures were used to seal became infected. This actually led to an increase in the Death Rate because they didn't know how to cure the infection.

Pare also discovered a new method of treating gunshot wounds. The tradition way was to use boiling oil, but one day he ran out, and so he made his own mixture of turpentine, oil of roses and egg yolks. This new mixture proved to be more effective as it was less painful and less people died because of the shock and the pain.

A final thing which Pare did was prove that the Bezoar Stone did not cure all poisons as it was rumoured to. He took a condemned man in prison who agreed to take the poison (on the condition that if the Bezoar Stone worked and saved him, he would be freed) and the man drunk some poison. Pare then gave him the Bezoar Stone. The man still died an agonising death. The Bezoar Stone did not work.