Ambroise Paré: An Influential Surgeon of Early Modern 

Europe

In the sixteenth century Ambroise Paré (1510-1590), a barber surgeon, was

changing the face of surgery.  He is known as the “Father of Modern Surgery” and
the “Father and the restorer of French Surgery”. His biggest advancements in
surgery were the treatment of gunshot wounds and tying veins and arteries instead
of cauterizing. Ambroise Paré was implementing more effective and less painful
treatments of patients.  This paper will examine Paré’s treatment of gunshot
wounds, and his move away from cauterization.

GUNSHOT WOUNDS

Ambroise Paré was trained as a barber surgeon at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris and at the
age of 19 he joined the military as an army surgeon.  It was there that he saw his
first gunshot wounds. The protocol for treating gunshot wounds at that time was to
cauterize the wound with scalding hot oil.  It was believed that the gunshot wounds
were poisoned from the gunpowder and that the only way to cure the wounds was
with boiling oil of Elders. Paré was using this treatment; however, one night he ran
out of the oil and had to make his own medicine, which he called a digestive, made
of egg yolks, rose oil and turpentine.  He was very worried about his patients who
did not receive the cauterizing oil.  However, in the morning he discovered that the
patients who received the digestive were in less pain and the wounds were healing
nicely with little inflammation.  Whereas the patients who did receive the boiling
oil treatment were in extreme pain, were feverish and the wounds were swollen.

Paré then began to test his new digestive on other patients to see if they would heal
better than patients with the oil treatment. It did not take him long to conclude that
the oil treatment should not be used to treat gunshot wounds.

TYING THE VEINS AND ARTERIES

His second great achievement is the method of tying the veins and arteries instead
of cauterizing them.  His method came under scrutiny and he was forced to defend
his position in his Apologie and Treatise, he used the authorities, reason and
experience to defend his position. Paré begins by listing the authorities, such as
Hippocrates and Galen, who recommend tying the veins and arteries. He then
explained the reasons for tying the vessels. Paré says that the application of the hot
cautery irons causes the patient undue pain and suffering and can possibly make
the patient worse or kill them. Cauterized wounds also take longer to heal and the
crust on the wound can sometimes fall off and the bleeding will resume. Paré lists
several of his different cases where he has used ligatures instead of cauterization
and their successful outcomes. This has been called the “rebirth of the ligature.”
Paré drew his knowledge from the ancient authorities and tested his theories before
validating them.

CONCLUSION

From these two methods, it is clear that Paré did not believe in cauterization and
causing patients undue pain.  Because of this Ambroise Paré was implementing
more effective and less painful treatments of patients.  Both the prior methods for
treating gunshot wounds and staunching the bleeding from the veins and arteries
were forms of cauterization.  Paré has a section in one of his treatises titled “The
First Discourse Wherein Wounds Made by Gunshot are Freed From Being Burnt,
or Cauterized According to Vigoes Method”. He also says that cauterization is an
unnecessary cruelty and if you use it, especially on soldiers they can kill you for
causing them undue pain. Pain relief was limited in Paré’s time, it was not until the
nineteenth century that anaesthetics began to develop. There are many more great
achievements accredited to Ambroise Paré such as his writings on operations,
aneurisms, hernias, amputations, fractures, dislocations, cataracts, kidney stones,
etc.

Ambroise Paré faced much opposition in his day, not just for his method of tying
the veins and arteries but also for the fact that he did not speak Latin and his works
were written in the vernacular. However, this did not stop Paré from publishing
innovative and informative surgical texts.  He was also the personal physician to
several French Kings including Charles IX. Paré is still highly regarded today, he
is honoured with the title the “Father of Modern Surgery”, he is credited with the
“development of the recognition of the value of the surgeon’s art”. He is also seen
as one of the most outstanding surgeons of all time. In France they wanted to
commemorate the work of     Ambroise Paré on the battlefield, they created a
plaque that reads “Ambroise Paré Illustre Chirurgien Bienfaiteur et Ami des
Soldats Blesses est Né Ici au Bourg-Hersent Vers 1510” (Ambroise Paré illustrious
surgeon, benefactor and friend of wounded soldiers, born here in Bourg-Hersent
around 1510).