161 Ambroise Pare Facts About The French Barber Surgeon

Ambroise Pare was a distinguished 16th-century surgeon from France, acknowledged as one of the founders of modern forensic surgery and pathology.

He is regarded as one of the primary founding fathers of modern surgery and contemporary forensic pathology. He was also a pioneer in surgical art and was famous for being one of the first military surgeons to use primary amputation to treat gunshot wounds.

Ambroise Pare was a barber physician who worked for Henry III, Henry II, Charles IX, and Francis II throughout their reigns. He studied anatomy and surgery before joining the army as a surgeon in 1537.

His practical achievements, publications, and theories revolutionized modern surgery and paved the way for the subsequent creation of neurosurgery. He was also an anatomist, a part of the Parisian Barber Surgeon Guild, and the inventor of various surgical instruments used for treating and curing wounds.

Pare was born in the northern French town of Bourg-Hersent in the year 1510. He was apprenticed to his elder sibling, a barber-surgeon in Paris when he was young, and became a student and a clinical assistant at France's oldest hospital, Hôtel-Dieu.

Barbers in Europe performed surgery for almost 600 years. In 1215, a papal order prohibited clergy from doing surgical procedures, believing that contact with blood was polluting the members of the church.

Barber surgeons then took charge of bloodletting and minor surgery, which was in accord with the medical physicians, who considered that these treatments were beneath their dignity.

Barber surgeons were occasionally referred to as 'physicians of the short robe' to separate themselves from medical doctors and surgeons, who were referred to as 'doctors of the long robe,' even though the surgeons were seldom granted university status.

Ambroise Pare began his career as a barber-surgeon and soon acquired the long robe due to his prominence. His time at the Hôtel-Dieu enabled him to serve as a physician in the French army during the civil war. His open mind allowed him to make several advancements during his career as a doctor of medicine and surgery.

If you like reading about Ambroise Pare, you should read on further to find out more about him. The answer to the question 'what was Ambroise Pare famous for?' lies below! There is a lot of information on Ambroise Pare, and many curious questions have been answered for you here.

Keep reading to find out answers to 'what did Ambroise Pare study? ', and 'what did Ambroise Pare do, exactly?' Also, be sure to check out our other facts articles; Ambrose Bierce facts and Ambrose burnside facts.

Fun Facts About Ambroise Pare

Pare serviced four French rulers in a row, including Henry II and his three sons, Henry III, Charles IX, and François II.

He lived in an atmosphere dominated by Catholicism as a Reformed Protestant (Huguenot). As a result, political circumstances and religious intolerance continued to hamper his practice and life as a surgeon of medicine quite a few times.

Ambroise Pare mainly studied surgery at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris and became a master barber-surgeon in 1536. Pare is also famous for having invented ocular prostheses, making artificial eyes from enameled silver, gold, glass, and porcelain.

Although Ambroise himself didn't discover ligatures, he rediscovered the proper use of ligatures, using a somewhat wire-like or thread-like material to constrict a patient's blood vessels.

Pare wrote in his own notes about the attention he gave Captain Rat during the Piémont campaign: 'I bandaged him and God healed him' (Je le pansai, Dieu le guérit). This encapsulates a mentality he lived by throughout his career as a military surgeon.

These remarks are evocative of the Latin proverb 'Medicus Curat, Natura Sanat,' which is etched on his statue in Laval.

When A. Vesalius made inventions in human anatomy, Pare had sections of Vesalius' work translated into French so that barber surgeons who couldn't read Latin might benefit from it while performing surgery or using medicine to treat wounded soldiers with gunshot wounds.

In 1545, Pare wrote his first book, The Way of Healing Arquebus and Rifle Wounds.

Jacques Guillemeau, Pare's student, ably supported him by translating his work into Latin and then writing a book on midwifery called Childbirth; or, The Happy Delivery of Women, published in 1612.

Facts About Ambroise Pare's Contribution

Pare observed the suffering of amputees where they feel a sensation in a phantom severed limb during his work as a military surgeon with injured troops.

Pare felt that phantom pains originate in the brain rather than limb remains, as doctors today believe. With this discovery, he made a truly important contribution to neurosurgery.

In the middle of the 16th century, Pare was also a pivotal player in the development of obstetrics. He resurrected the practice of the podalic version, demonstrating that, even in situations of head presentation, surgeons can deliver a newborn safely using this method.

Pare had a direct impact on the learning of impending royal obstetrician Louise Boursier while at the Hôtel-Dieu.

The results of Pare's rigorous investigations on the impact of violent death on internal organs are also included in his works and are a significant contribution to the field of modern medicine, surgery, and anatomy. He also developed and published Reports in Court, a technique for preparing legal reports in the field of medicine.

His lessons and papers are credited with laying the foundation for contemporary forensic anatomy and surgery.

Ambroise Pare made contributions to both surgical amputation and the development of limb prosthetics. He also made use of new techniques to attempt making prosthetic eyes out of enameled porcelain, gold, glass, and silver. Pare devised various ocular prostheses and methods as well.

He made further huge contributions to the modern world of medicine through his written works and books. In 1575, a compilation of Pare's writings was published in Paris (he published them independently during his life, based on his experiences treating troops on the battlefield).

They were regularly republished, with multiple versions in German and Dutch, as well as Thomas Johnson's English translation (1634).

Facts About Ambroise Pare's Medical Discoveries

He introduced several new techniques and made surgical advancements in curing wounds, especially gunshot wounds, vascular ligation for limb amputation, hemorrhage avoidance, and the treatment of head and spine injuries caused during military campaigns.

He believed that a surgeon should operate softly in order to alleviate pain and enhance outcomes, and he devoted his life to helping the injured, sick, and underprivileged.

In addition, instead of cauterization during amputation, Pare reintroduced artery ligature (originally employed by Galen). The traditional method of sealing wounds by burning them with a red-hot iron frequently failed to stop the bleeding, resulting in people dying of shock.

He created the 'crow's beak' (Bec de Corbeau) for the ligature procedure, a forerunner to current hemostats. Despite the fact that ligatures frequently spread infection, it was nonetheless a significant advancement in surgical technique. In his 1564 book Treatise on Surgery, Pare described the practice of utilizing ligatures to reduce bleeding during amputation.

As bullet wounds were thought to be toxic at the time Pare joined the army, soldiers treated them with boiling oil. When Pare's stores of oil dropped out, he used a new method of turpentine, rose oil, and an egg yolk concoction to cure the wounds.

He discovered that wounds treated with this practice healed faster than those treated with boiling oil and, therefore, replaced it with more humane treatment. He published his results in La Méthode De Tracter Les Playes Faites Par Les Arquebuses Et Aultres Bastons A Feu (1545), which was initially mocked since it was written in French instead of Latin.

Another of Pare's medical discoveries that did not gain quick medical recognition was his reintroduction of major artery tying to replace the procedure of burning vessels with hot irons to prevent hemorrhage during amputation.

Unlike many other surgeons of his period, Pare only used surgery when it was absolutely essential. He was, in fact, one of the first to abandon the practice of castrating hernia patients who needed surgery.

He pioneered the practice of implantation of gold and silver teeth, prosthetic limbs, and artificial eyes. He produced several scientific tools, promoted the use of the truss for hernia repair, and was the first to indicate that syphilis may be the cause of an aneurysm.

Ambroise Pare performed an experiment in which he tested the qualities of bezoar stones in 1567. Surgeons thought that the stones were able to heal the symptoms of any toxin at the time, but Pare thought this was impossible.

A chef at Pare's court was discovered stealing exquisite silverware and was sentenced to death by hanging. The cook accepted to be poisoned on the condition that he would be given a bezoar immediately following the poisoning and would be set free if he survived.

He died in pain seven hours after being poisoned because the stone did not cure him. Pare, therefore, proved that bezoars could not cure all toxins and that this method used by some doctors was a major hoax.

During the Siege of Perpignan in 1542, Pare, who was accompanying the troops from France, devised a revolutionary method to help with bullet extraction. Marechal de Brissac was shot in the shoulder during combat and was wounded.

When it became clear that identifying the bullet would be difficult, Pare devised a plan to have the victim place himself in the identical position he was in when he was shot. Nicole Lavernault, Henry's personal surgeon, located and removed the bullet with this process devised by Pare.

Facts About Ambroise Pare's Life

In 1552, Ambroise Pare was recruited into the Valois Dynasty's royal service as one of the barber surgeons under Henry II.

Unfortunately, he could not heal the king's fatal head wound, which he got during a game in 1559.

Ambroise Pare served Henry II, Henry III, Charles IX, and Francis II in the service of the Kings of France until his tragic death in 1590.

Pare was a Huguenot, as per Sully, Henri IV's chief minister, and his life was saved on the day of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (24 August 1572) when King Charles IX locked him in a clothing closet.

He died of natural causes on 20 December 1590 in Paris in his 80th year and was buried at the chapel of Saint Andre-des-Arts.

While there is proof that Pare was considerate towards the Huguenot faith, he appears to have maintained a Catholic façade to escape danger.

Ambroise Pare married twice and had his kids baptized into the Catholic church.

Since the famous barber surgeon's death, several books and works of literature have been written to honor his contributions. One such work by Janet Doe was published in the year 1937, under the name A Bibliography of the Works of Ambroise Pare. It contains many essays on the life of Ambroise Pare and his outstanding discoveries.

Bernard Christophe, a French amateur astronomer who found Asteroid 259344 Pare, named it in honor of Ambroise Pare in 2003. The Minor Planet Center provided the official naming citation on 14 February 2014.

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