BY AMBROISE PARE

TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN PAGET


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,