Ambrose Pare
V.K. SUBRAMANIAN
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Ambrose Pare (1510 A.D. – 1590 A.D.), considered the “father of modern surgery”, was surgeon to four kings.
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Illustration: V.K. SUBRAMANIAN
While Susruta, who lived in the 6th century B.C. in India, is considered the Father of surgery, Ambrose Pare, the French surgeon, who lived in the 16th century A.D., is deemed the “Father of Modern Surgery”.
Ambrose Pare belonged to a period when physicians considered it infra dig to perform surgeries, which was left to manual labourers, especially barbers!
Pare who was born in 1510 came to Paris as a boy in 1519, and became a barber’s apprentice. In 1536 he became a master barber-surgeon.
In 1541, he joined the French army as a barber-surgeon. Soon his reputation spread and he became the surgeon to four kings: Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III.
New methods
Guns were a new weapon of war and gunshot wounds were being treated crudely by pouring boiling oil. Pare used soothing ointments, which were very effective and saved the patients from cruel pain.
Pare practised the utmost cleanliness in his surgeries. He introduced the system of tying the ends of arteries and veins to stop bleeding.
Pare’s new methods of treating wounds were successfully adopted by surgeons all over Europe.
Even though Pare was flooded with compliments for his innovations, he was very humble and used to say about his patients: “I treated him. God cured him” — a motto adopted by many missionary hospitals which put up the placard: “We treat, God cures.”
Ambrose Pare died on
December 20, 1590.
This is an extract from the book The Great Ones by V.K. Subramanian, Abhinav Publications,
New Delhi
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