FIG. 22. PIERRE FRANCO’S FORCEPS FOR CRUSHING CALCULI IN THE URINARY BLADDER.
(From Edouard Nicaise’s Pierre Franco, Paris, 1895.)
a, closed; b, open.
In Franco’s day the belief was widely prevalent that there were remedies which possessed the power of dissolving a cystic calculus. His own opinion in regard to this matter is expressed in the following words: “I am astonished that there should be many men who do not hesitate to undertake the disintegration and pulverization of a stone in the bladder by the employment of remedies which are either to be administered by the mouth or to be injected per urethram into that organ.” He adds that a remedy strong enough to dissolve even the softer stones would become so changed and weakened in passing through the various organs which it must traverse on its journey from the mouth to the bladder that it could not possibly produce the desired effect; nor could a chemical solution strong enough to dissolve such a calculus be injected into the bladder by way of the urethra without either causing inflammation and ulceration of the walls of that organ or promptly exciting muscular contraction that would effectively expel the solution.
This seems to be an appropriate place in which to state that lithotrity was practiced at an earlier date by Antonio Beniveni (1440–1502), a Florentine physician whose writings reveal him to have been a man of a very practical and unprejudiced type of mind, a very clear writer, and a practitioner of wide experience. He also deserves credit for having been the first surgeon to revive the operation of tracheotomy, a procedure which was carried out by Antyllus fourteen centuries earlier, but which appears to have been forgotten during this long interval. He saved a patient’s life by means of the operation.
The date of Franco’s death is not known.
CHAPTER XL
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SURGERY IN FRANCE (Continued).—AMBROISE PARÉ
Ambroise Paré was born, about the year 1517, at Laval, a small town in the Department of Mayenne, France. His father was probably the valet and barber of the Count of Laval. He went to Paris in early manhood and spent three years, at this period, in fitting himself for the career of a surgeon. He attended lectures on anatomy and surgery, did a certain amount of dissecting, served for over two years as a surgeon’s assistant in the great hospital of Hôtel-Dieu, made notes of some of the cases which he saw, and was occasionally permitted to prescribe for patients and even to perform some minor operations. From 1536 onward, nearly up to the time of his death, he was almost continuously engaged, in the capacity of a surgeon, in accompanying different French armies on their military expeditions. His professional title at first was that of “barber,” but he doubtless very soon discovered that, if he wished to advance, it would be absolutely necessary for him to secure a higher title. Accordingly, in 1541, he and his friend Thierry de Héry presented themselves for, and passed successfully, the required examination and were accepted as “master-barbers.” It is an interesting fact that, during his long professional career, Paré was Chief Surgeon to four Kings of France in succession—first to Henry the Second (1547–1559), next to Francis the Second (1559–1560), then to Charles the Ninth (1560–1574), and finally to Henry the Third (1574–1589). The last-named King bestowed upon him the additional honor of “Councilor to his Majesty.” He also served, during a certain period of his career, as an attending surgeon at Hôtel-Dieu. The three large volumes of Paré’s writings (Malgaigne’s edition) are filled with the rich experience which this great surgeon gained in the course of a large private practice and in the field expeditions and sieges conducted during the reigns of these Kings. Interspersed among the reports of cases and descriptions of operations are to be found not a few comments of a more general character and some biographic details which add greatly to the charm of the work as a whole, and which at the same time make it possible to form a general idea of Paré’s traits of character. On almost every page one finds statements which reveal the fact that he weighed almost all the duties of his daily life in a profoundly religious manner. He showed himself warmly sympathetic for all those whose ailments he was called upon to treat, and he was always as ready to bestow his best services upon the Roman Catholics as upon the Huguenots—to which latter denomination (if we may so call it) he himself is commonly reported to have belonged. It seems to me more probable, however, that he was a liberal-minded Roman Catholic rather than a Protestant, for there is trustworthy evidence showing that all his ten children were baptized in that faith and that he himself, nineteen years before the night of Saint Bartholomew (August 24, 1572), held the office of “Pathe” in the church of the parish in which he lived. Another prominent trait of Paré’s character was the modest estimate which he placed upon his own professional achievements. One of his sayings, which occurs a number of times in his writings and which has since become famous, is this:—
Je le pansay, et Dieu le guarist.