Selections from the Works of Ambroise Paré

Abstract

AMBROISE PARE (1510?-1590), although brought up as a barber surgeon, lived to become the founder of French surgery, one of its shining lights, and one of the greatest military surgeons of all time. He published a great deal during his lifetime, and his collected works appeared in many editions after his death. There must have been a very large number of copies of his works, and yet the earlier ones are excessively rare or even unobtainable in some of the largest medical libraries. Pare's experiences were bought practically in numerous campaigns, battles, and sieges in which he served various French kings against that stormy petrel of the sixteenth century, Charles V. Apart from his practical skill as a surgeon, Pare's name has been honoured in all subsequent ages as the ideal of an honest, modest man of a most humane disposition, with an intense feeling of sympathy for the wounded soldier gashed by gunshot wounds or arrow-heads. His modesty is summed up in his motto, “Je le pansay et Dieu le guarit.”

Selections from the Works of Ambroise Paré.

With Short Biography and Explanatory and Bibliographical Notes, by Dorothea Waley Singer. (Medical Classics Series.) Pp. iv + 246. (London: J. Bale, Sons and Danielsson, Ltd., 1924.) 12s. 6d. net.