teenth century. His judicious and fertile mind never became acquainted with an evil but he sought to remedy it. From that moment the restoration of surgery was decreed; measuring the immense space which separated him from the object he proposed to attain, and never concealing from himself the difficulties of every kind which attended the execution of such a vast project, sustained by a genius of still greater extent, and particularly by the noble and praise-worthy ambition of being useful to humanity, Paré was anxious to raise to the art of surgery a durable monument, founded upon the most correct traditional knowledge, and upon the facts collected during his own fortunate and extensive practice of half a century.

The valuable materials which, during this period, experience and observation had collected around him, Paré would not give to the world, until, as he informs us, he had consulted several excellent men, "physicians as well as surgeons, who encouraged him to pass beyond even the proposed end of his career.'

In his writings, which are full of candour and goodness of heart, Paré never lets an opportunity escape of paying to the ancients the tribute of esteem which they deserve. Every where he speaks of the respect which is due to the first inventors of the art: "So far as it was possible," he says, "I have never suffered that the treasures of the good fathers should be kept secret." He also observes, with his usual good sense, that, notwithstanding the important discoveries for which we are indebted to antiquity, it cannot be denied that surgery, like all the experimental sciences, daily enriching itself with facts, ought necessarily to reckon upon time and observation for increasing its resources and perfecting its methods: “that, moreover, it is unpardonable negligence to stop at the invention of our ancestors, imitating them merely after the example of the idle, without adding to and increasing the inheritance which they have left us."

If we wish properly to appreciate the immense services

which the healing art has received from Paré, let us cast an eye upon the state of surgery, at the period when he first entered upon his career.

66 Roger, Roland, Bruno, Guillaume de Salicet, Lanfranc, Gorden, Guy de Chauliac, confined themselves to commentaries on the Arabs, and had reduced surgery to the use of ointments and plaisters."*

Thus the Arabians and their followers only rivalled the prejudices, and multiplied the errors, which, transmitted from age to age, received the sanction of time and of the authority of some masters. Abandoned to the most despicable empiricism, surgery then was confined to machinery clumsily contrived, if the reduction of a luxated or fractured limb was required; and emplastra of every kind, consisting of strange and incongruous mixtures of contradictory substances, if solutions of continuity of soft parts, of whatever nature, were to be treated.

Whatever of the useful part of surgery had been preserved by tradition, was either despised or mistaken. No trace was perceptible of that philosophic spirit which, wisely desirous of discoveries, incessantly seeks after truth, and in a series of uninterrupted combined efforts, tends to rise above the darkness of ignorance, and to triumph over the seductions of error. Surgery, then more barbarous than the age itself, bursts the fetters of prejudice and authority. It was particularly in the treatment of gunshot wounds, that the most stupid routine seemed destined, as it were, to increase the horrors of war; and, if among the victims of the field, and this murderous routine, some men were so fortunate as to escape the dreadful accidents thus occasioned, they purchased their lives at the expense of frightful mutilations and deformities.

It cannot be denied, that the discoveries which do the greatest honour to human genius have been primitively owing to chance, or rather have been revealed by Providence.

* Richerand. Nosographie Chirurgicale, Hist. de l'Art.

Paré is forced to confess that chance was his first master in the treatment of gunshot wounds. Employed at first in the army of Piedmont, he relates, that his practice did not differ from that which had been previously followed. The boiling oil which he was pouring over the wounds having fallen short, he was obliged, with regret, to substitute a very mild digestive. Fear kept him awake the whole of the night. Young, and under the influence of the prejudices of his masters, he expected to find that all those had perished who had not undergone the cruel unction. It was not without astonishment, mixed with pleasure, that he saw quite the reverse had happened. His genius effected the rest.

It belonged to the restorer of surgery to elucidate the treatment of gunshot wounds, by dissipating the prejudices which so long kept back this branch of surgery, by substituting, for the most absurd theory, and the most barbarous processes of blind empiricism, rational ideas, and curative methods, as simple as they were efficacious.

Ignorance, always inattentive, and perceiving no relation between gunshot wounds, considered relative to their external appearances, and the serious accidents with which they are complicated, found it quite natural to ascribe all these effects to the pretended poison of gunpowder, as well as to the cauterizing property of the various projectiles.

Opinions so false, and the dangerous consequences which necessarily resulted from their application to practice, could not fail to strike the mind of Paré in a forcible manner: in a discourse which he addresses to Charles the Ninth, on the occasion of the death of the king of Navarre, who was wounded at the siege of Rouen, he exposes, like an expert physiologist, the mode of action and the various effects of round bodies, and other projectiles, upon the various systems of the animal economy: he demonstrates, that the black colour which marks their passage and their too frequent unfortunate termination, results, 1. From the excessive contusion and laceration of soft parts; 2. From the violent commotion experienced by the VOL. V. 2 H

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wounded limbs; 3. From the stupor which supervenes, dissipating and sometimes extinguishing the natural heat, whereby gangrene and mortification of the part, if not of the whole body, is brought on.

Thus mouldered away the ridiculous theory of gunshot wounds, adopted by Fevy, Botal, Vigo, &c. previous to the time of Paré. Thus vanished forever the frightful apparatus employed by men who supposed that gunpowder was of a venomous nature, and that balls and bullets became inflamed in their course, so as to cauterize all soft bodies with which they

came in contact.

It belongs only to real genius to unite profundity of ideas with strength and precision of style. When genius, embracing the whole of a subject at one grasp, penetrates into all its elements, comparing and generalizing, the mind of a common stamp, scarcely dipping into the matter under discussion, abandons things themselves to attend to the futile arrangement of words, and speedily, far from the traces of good principles, it wanders in the ocean of false hypotheses. What has been the result of such fruitless efforts? Some valuable ideas have been buried under the weight of insipid volumes.

Paré on the contrary has left us but a few pages on gunshot wounds; but nevertheless we may affirm, without fear of contradiction, that, with the exception of some superannuated pharmaceutical preparations, they are full of sage and luminous precepts, well calculated to guide even the modern practitioner in his knowledge and treatment of this description of wounds.

When we compare the doctrine of Paré with all that was previously practised with respect to gunshot wounds, and with the slowness with which the healing art has since advanced, his transcendant merit will appear still more striking. But nothing has escaped his observation. Does he treat of simple or compound solutions of continuity in the bones? His precepts exhibit the consummate skill of the most expert practitioner. In a fracture compounded with laceration, is it necessary to

ascertain the position and state of the parts in general? It is to the fingers alone that he entrusts this office; for he observes, the sense of touch is more certain than any instrument. Will it be believed that this mode of proceeding, dictated by good sense, and supported by experience and the laws of nature, has been called in question? In fact, the probing of wounds with instruments, whatever is their direction, extent, or situation, has passed into one of these routine customs, which but too generally prevail over truth and reason.

From the sublimest eminences of the art, Paré disdains not to descend to the humblest details, persuaded that nothing ought to be overlooked in a profession which has the life and health of mankind under its care; and that a process which was trifling or useless in other hands, may produce the happiest results when resorted to by an enlightened surgeon. In this way Paré regards the art of dressing wounds as a medium, not only for exhibiting manual dexterity, but for bringing into play delicacy of tact and fertility of talent, besides paving the way for a completion of the cure.

After being himself exposed to the formidable concomitants of a compound fracture of the leg, Paré informs us, in the faithful details which he has left behind him, with what scrupulous attention he meditated upon the means of preventing and curing such accidents as may result from such a misfortune. Alluding to the excruciating pain, insupportable heat, and general uneasiness which the patient experiences, he observed, and all attentive practitioners have since observed, that all these concomitants necessarily result from the permanent position in which the body must be placed in fractures of the lower extremities; thus he remarks, that the patient is wonderfully relieved, if from time to time the position of the fractured limb is changed, so as to refresh it by renewing the circumambient air, and momentarily relieving it from the pressure to which the fractured parts are liable. To express this renovation of the air, Paré invented the word flabellation, as opposing itself to the progress of inflammation.