Ambroise Paré

PARÉ, Ambroise (died 1590), a 16th-century French surgeon, nicknamed the "father of modern surgery"; he was born in a suburb of Laval (Brittany) into the family of a poor chest maker. (The year of his birth is not precisely established: 1510, 1516, or 1517.) He did not receive a solid primary education. He began to learn the trade of a barber. A chance presence at an operation by the famous lithotomist Colot decided the young man's fate, inspiring a desire for surgery. He set off first to Angers, and then to a lower medical school in Paris. There, he studied under the guidance of the anatomist Jacques Dubois (Sylvius), famous for his research on the brain, who arranged for him to work at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital as a barber apprentice. Three years later (1536), Paré finished his hospital internship and joined the active army as a barber-surgeon. Returning in 1539, he passed an examination and received the title of "master barber-surgeon," studied anatomy under Sylvius, and wrote his first scientific work on gunshot wounds (1543–45), which he published in the old French language. Then came more military campaigns. Paré's popularity grew to such an extent that the higher class of surgeons, the "Brotherhood of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian," contrary to tradition, considered it necessary to admit him into their circle: on December 18, 1554, he received the title of surgeon of the brotherhood. In 1563, he became the "first surgeon to the king" and was elected head of the surgical department of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital; then followed 2 years of travel, acquaintance with prominent surgeons, study of the works of the greatest anatomist A. Vesalius, and the development of his own material. Paré was a Huguenot, and on August 23, 1572 (St. Bartholomew's Day massacre), Charles IX saved him from death. In the 80th year of his life, this greatest surgeon of France of his time died in Paris. Paré's services to surgery are as follows: 1) he moved the issue of treating gunshot wounds off dead center, proving that they are not poisoned in themselves (J. Vigo) and that the method of cauterizing them with boiling oil is excessively cruel; 2) he strengthened, improved, and expanded the use of vessel ligation with thread during operations; 3) he was the first to break the medieval tradition and began printing scientific works in the vernacular; 4) he was the first to show that one must amputate in healthy tissues and preserve as much of the limb as possible (Book X, ch. 20–28); 5) he described and proposed many orthopedic devices; 6) he showed the irrationality of incidental castration during hernia repair; 7) he was the first to describe fractures of the femoral neck; 8) he was the first to show the possibility of removing loose bodies from the joint cavity (knee) while preserving their function, and he was the first to perform a resection of the elbow joint; 9) he was the first to begin the use of passive hyperemia for delayed formation of bone callus in fractures (Book XIII, ch. 30); 10) in his works, one can find the first foundations of the modern doctrine of pyemia. The collected works of Paré were published by Malgaigne (Oeuvres complètes d'Ambroise Paré, publiées par J. Malgaigne, v. I–III, P., 1840; biography of Paré) and in English with a bibliography and commentary by D. Singer (D. W. Singer, Selections from the works of Ambroise Paré, L., 1923).