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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Ambroise Pare Biography PARÉ, pa'ra', Ambroise (1517–90). A French surgeon, born at Laval, Department of Mayenne. He was apprenticed to a barber in Paris, studied anatomy and surgery, became an assistant at the Hôtel Dieu, and in 1536 entered the army as a surgeon. During the military operations in Italy he acquired a great reputation as a skillful surgeon. He introduced the practice of ligating arteries in bleeding wounds in place of the fashion which then prevailed of cauterizing them with boiling oil. Although to him we owe the use of trusses in hernia, the employment of massage, and other innovations, it is on the ligating of arteries that his fame as "the father of modern surgery" chiefly rests. On his return to Paris in 1539 he was received with distinction by the Royal College of Surgery and was subsequently made its president. War being renewed, he again entered active service, this time introducing the practice, after amputations, of using ligatures instead of cauterization with hot irons. Honors were showered upon him, even learned titles and degrees, though Paré was ignorant of Latin, then the conditio sine qua non of a liberal education. He became surgeon to Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, and to Henry III. It has been stated that by order of the King he was spared at the slaughter of the Huguenots in the night of St. Bartholomew. Paré's writings have exercised a profound influence on the practice of surgery. He was the first surgeon to write (perforce) in his native tongue instead of in Latin. His best-known works are his treatise on gunshot wounds, La manière de traiter les playes (1552); on surgery, Dix livres de la chirurgie (1564) and Deux livres de chirurgie (1573); on the pest (1568); on monsters (1573); and against the use of mummies and unicorns in therapeutics, Discours à scavoir, de la mummie, des venins, de la licorne, et de la peste (1582). A complete edition of Paré's works, edited by Malgaigne, appeared at Paris in 1840–41. Besides this are eight Latin editions and more than 15 translations. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 57-58. |