Ambroise Pare

(1510-1590)
Pare was born in France in 1510. He was apprenticed to his
brother, a barber-surgeon and went to Paris to train as a
barber-surgeon in 1523. In 1536 he became an army
surgeon and spent twenty years on campaign, treating
sword and gunshot wounds. His practical experience on
the battlefield convinced him that many surgical techniques
were wrong and provided him with the opportunity to experiment and try out
new ideas. He learnt never to trust a medical idea unless he had seen it work
and the following discoveries illustrate his success.
Treating gunshot wounds
It was traditional to treat gunshot wounds by pouring boiling hot oil on the
wound. This was meant to cauterise the wound burn out any poison. One day
Pare treated so many soldiers for gunshot wounds that his burning oil ran out. He
was forced to try out a new method and made up an ointment of eggs,
turpentine and oil of roses which he applied to the wounds. Pare slept badly
that night, fearing his patients would be dead in the morning. To his delight he
found them well on the road to recovery whereas those who had been treated
with boiling oil were in agony and dying. Pare immediately learnt from this
accident never to use boiling oil again.
Stopping the bleeding
Pare often had to amputate arms and legs
from soldiers once gangrene had set in. The
usual method to stop the bleeding once the
limb was removed was to press a red-hot iron,
called a cautery, against the stump. This
sealed the blood vessels and stopped the
patient bleeding to death. The pain caused by
the red-hot iron was excruciating and many
soldiers died from the shock. Pare, therefore
began to experiment with a new method. His
answer was to tie silk thread round each of the
blood vessels to seal them up. These silk
threads were called ligatures. This proved
successful so he adopted it as his normal
practice.
Medicines

Pare was very sceptical of many of the medicines and potions given to patients.
He would only use those he could prove worked. A good example of this was his
testing of bezoar. This was a stone from the stomach of a goat that was dissolved
and turned into medicine. Doctors claimed it was a cure-all but Pare argued that
no medicine could cure everything. He tested the bezoar on a soldier who had
been arrested and condemned to death. The soldier agreed to the experiment and
was promised he could go free if he survived. The soldier was given a deadly
poison and then given bezoar to cure it. The soldier died in great agony, his
stomach turning black from the poison. Bezoar was shown to be useless and Pare
refused to use it again.
Opposition
Like Vesalius, Pare faced much opposition. The old methods had been used for a
very long time and physicians disliked change. Also, although Pares ligatures
stopped the bleeding they were dangerous because the threads themselves could
go septic and infect the wound. If Pare had had an antiseptic to kill the germs
then his ligatures might have worked better. Unfortunatley antiseptics were not
invented for another 300 years, and nobody in Pares time even knew about
germs or exactly how infection spread.
Eventually Pare retired from the army. He became a successful surgeon in Paris,
treating three French Kings. He wrote a number of books during his lifetime and in
1575 published Works on Surgery. This was written in French, not Latin, and
was soon translated into many other languages, spreading his ideas throughout
Europe. Pare died in 1490 after a long and successful career.

Tasks
1. What did Pare do in the French army?
2. What did his experience on the battlefield teach him?
3. Describe the traditional method of treating gunshot wounds. What problems
were there with this method?
4. What did Pare do when the burning oil ran out?
5. Describe the traditional method of stopping patients bleeding. What problems
were there with this method?
6. What was Pares new method?
7. How did Pare prove the medicine, bezoar, did not work?
8. Why did physicians oppose Pares ideas?
9. How could Pares methods have been improved?
10. How did Pare spread his ideas?
EXTENSION
Explain how each of the following factors played a part in Pares discoveries and
helped spread his ideas:
(a) war
(b) chance (c) Pares own intelligence
(d) printing
Which factor do you think was most important? Explain your choice.