THE GOLDEN AGE OF SURGERY IN FRANCE
CHAPTER XXII
J. L. PETIT, OF PARIS, AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES IN SURGERY—SABATIER, CHOPART, DESAULT AND DUPUYTREN
In the history of surgery in France there is a conspicuous absence of distinguished names from the list of men who succeeded Ambroise Paré, until we reach that of J. L. Petit, a surgeon whose career shows him to have been worthy of all the praise and esteem which the French have lavishly bestowed upon him.
Jean-Louis Petit was born at Paris in 1674, and already at the early age of twelve manifested a strong inclination to adopt a surgical career. By the time he had reached his sixteenth year he had become so expert as a dissector that he was entrusted with the duties of a demonstrator of anatomy, a position which he filled to the entire satisfaction of both the students and the superior authorities of the medical school. Two years later,—that is, in 1692,—he entered the military service and was given the position of Army Surgeon. He was present at the siege of Namur, and served through all the succeeding campaigns up to the year 1697, at which time he was placed in charge of the Military Hospital at Tournay. In 1700 he retired from the army and returned to Paris, where he engaged in private practice and at the same time gave instruction in anatomy and surgery. From this time forward his reputation as a skilful surgeon rose rapidly until he was universally acknowledged to be the leading surgeon of the capital, a fact which was confirmed by his election to the position of Director of the Royal Academy of Surgery.
It was said of him by a very competent critic (A. Richet) that Petit was one of the boldest and most skilful surgeons of his day. He possessed a profound knowledge of the anatomy of almost every region of the body, and at the same time was remarkably skilful in the handling of his bistouri. He also seemed to possess, on the spur of the moment, an intuitive knowledge of what he should do in any situation of affairs that might suddenly develop in the course of an operation. The reflections which he made as he progressed in the work with which he happened to be busied, were most original, and led somebody to say of him, on a certain occasion: “He must have invented surgery.” On reading his treatise on surgical maladies one is struck with the originality of his remarks, with the profoundness of his thinking, and with the closeness and accuracy of his observations. His writings make most attractive reading for the surgeon.
In order that my readers may judge for themselves how cleverly and how wisely Petit dealt with some of the surgical problems which presented themselves for solution in the course of his private practice I will give here, in the form of very brief translations, three instances which seem to me to possess to-day a peculiar interest in that they reveal the important fact that a correct diagnosis may occasionally be made without the aid of some of the complicated and expensive machinery which not a few of our modern surgeons think indispensable to the ascertainment of the truth. I should perhaps modify this last remark by stating that the extraordinary cleverness and practical wisdom exhibited by J. L. Petit are gifts not often bestowed by Nature upon physicians, and that therefore the X-ray and other modern inventions which compensate for the infrequency of such gifts, are to be considered in the light of very important blessings conferred upon suffering humanity.
