But when upon trial he (the chirurgeon) shall find the contumaciousness of the disease, which frequently deluded his best care and industry, he will find reason of acknowledging the goodness of God; who hath dealt so bountifully with this Nation in giving the Kings of it, at least from Edward the Confessor downwards (if not for a longer time), an extraordinary power in the miraculous cure thereof.... I myself have been a frequent eye-witness of many hundreds of cures performed by his Majesty’s touch alone, without any assistance of chirurgery; and those, many of them, such as had tired out the endeavors of able chirurgeons before they came thither.

Some years before his death, which occurred in 1686, Wiseman was given the title of Serjeant-Chirurgeon to King Charles the Second.

CHAPTER XLII
REFORMS INSTITUTED BY THE ITALIAN SURGEON MAGATI IN THE TREATMENT OF WOUNDS.—FINAL ENDING OF THE FEUD BETWEEN THE SURGEONS AND THE PHYSICIANS OF PARIS.—REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN THE SCIENCE OF OBSTETRICS

Reforms Instituted by Magati.—Cesare Magati, who was born in 1579 at Scandiano, in the Duchy of Règgio, studied medicine at the University of Bologna and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from that institution in 1597. Immediately afterward he went to Rome and devoted himself particularly to the study of anatomy and surgery. Then, upon his return to his native land, he quickly acquired so great a reputation as a surgeon that the Duke of Bentivoglio, who was a man of enlightened views and ambitious to promote in every possible way the best interests of the University of Ferrara, offered Magati the Chair of Surgery in that institution. The offer was accepted in 1612, and Magati continued to hold the position for several years, his services being highly appreciated both by the authorities of the university and by the students. But, when his health began to break down,—he was affected with stone in the bladder,—he decided that his best course was to resign his professorship, retire from active practice, and become a Capuchin monk. When he took this step he obtained permission from the head of the Chapter to which he belonged, to resume in a limited measure the surgical work which he was so well fitted to do. But in the year 1647 his sufferings became so acute that he was obliged to visit Bologna in the hope of obtaining relief through operative interference. The operation, however, did not prove successful, and death occurred shortly afterward.

Magati effected, in a quiet and unostentatious manner, a number of desirable reforms in surgical procedures. Thus, for example, he pointed out how undesirable it is, in most cases, to change the dressings of a wound so frequently as was, at that period, the common practice. The process of cicatrization, he insisted, is not effected by the efforts of the surgeon, but is fundamentally the work of Nature. Then, in addition, he protested against the practice of introducing wicks and pledgets of lint into wounds. These criticisms and this advice, says von Gurlt, had been given many times before by different ancient authors, but they undoubtedly had to be repeated from time to time.

The treatise in which Magati has written these things bears the following title: “De rara medicatione vulnerum, seu de vulneribus raro tractandis, libri duo,” Venice, 1616 and 1676; also Nuremberg, 1733.

Final Extinguishment of the Long-standing Feud between the Surgeons and the Physicians in Paris.—At several points in the course of this sketch of the history of medicine, I have called attention to the fact that, during the centuries preceding those which are reckoned by certain authors as belonging to modern times, surgeons as a class were generally looked upon, especially in the larger cities of France, as decidedly inferior to physicians. The first attempt at something like systematic instruction in surgery was made by the Brotherhood of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian at Paris. This organization, which was founded by Jean Pitard about the middle of the thirteenth century, was composed of a group of barbers who felt a strong desire to secure for themselves a better training than was obtainable by the generality of barbers in those days. The latter were known as “surgeons of the short gown,” while the more ambitious men, who belonged to the group mentioned above, were known as “surgeons of the long gown.” With the progress of time this smaller group of barbers really succeeded in making better surgeons of themselves, but in accomplishing this they intensified at the same time the jealousy which the physicians as a class felt toward them, a jealousy which repeatedly manifested itself in the form of downright persecution. The data for a complete account of this persecution, that persisted through centuries, are lacking, and even if I possessed them I should not care to devote the time that would be required for a proper presentation of the subject. It is pleasant, however, to be able to record the fact that these plucky barbers never entirely lost courage, but fought on, year after year, until they eventually succeeded—with the help of a strongly sympathetic public—in making the St. Côme Medical School the nursery of some of the best surgeons in France during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was here, for example, that Paré, Guillemeau, Thierry de Héry and other men of distinction obtained their early training, and it was doubtless through their influence that some of the wealthy patients whom they had treated successfully, were induced to contribute liberally to the support of the school. The final event in the history of this institution was the complete overthrow of the opposing physicians and the merging of the two surgical schools—that of the regular Faculty and the St. Côme School—into one, under the direction of de Lapeyronie, of whom I shall now furnish a brief sketch.

François de Lapeyronie.—François de Lapeyronie was born at Montpellier on January 15, 1678, and he enjoyed the privilege of receiving a most careful preliminary education. He was only seventeen years of age when the academic degree which corresponds to our Master of Arts was bestowed upon him. As the next step he visited Paris for the purpose of perfecting his knowledge of surgery, the branch of science in which he was specially interested; and upon his return to Montpellier he began giving instruction in anatomy and surgery. In a short time he was chosen Surgeon-in-Chief of the Montpellier Hôtel-Dieu. In 1714 he was called to Paris to take charge of the Duc de Chaulnes, whose malady had not yielded to the treatment adopted by the surgeons of that city; and in this case the measures which he employed proved so efficacious that de Lapeyronie decided to settle permanently in the metropolis. He taught anatomy in the Collège de Saint-Côme, and in a short time was chosen Head Surgeon of the Charité, one of the largest hospitals of Paris. In 1731 he became one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Surgery, and he took a most prominent part in the struggle which was then actively going on between the physicians and surgeons of Paris,—one of the last and most serious of the attempts made by the former to render the surgeons subordinate to the physicians. The surgeons won the battle (April 23, 1743), and Dezeimeris says that the part taken by de Lapeyronie in this struggle may be looked upon as one of the most honorable achievements recorded in the history of medicine. De Lapeyronie died on April 25, 1747, after a long and painful illness. In his will he made most liberal provision for the promotion of medical science; establishing funds for the giving of annual prizes, for the founding of a medical library, for the building of an anatomical amphitheatre, etc. In his treatise on anatomy Hyrtl, the distinguished professor at the University of Vienna, makes the following brief statement with reference to a certain dissecting room in Paris, but he does not state in what part of the city the room in question is located, nor does he mention any other facts that might enable his readers to fix its location. In the absence of more precise information concerning this matter, I shall take the liberty of suggesting that Hyrtl’s discovery was made in the Anatomical Institute which de Lapeyronie founded. Hyrtl’s statement reads as follows:—

Over the entrance doorway of a dissecting room in Paris I read this inscription: Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. [Here is the spot where Death rejoices to render assistance to Life.] No more beautiful or fitting words could be employed for inspiring the student, upon his first entrance into the room, with respect for the work in which he is about to engage.

And yet, a few pages beyond that on which the above statement is printed, Hyrtl quotes Vicq d’Azyr as saying: “Among all the sciences anatomy is perhaps the one the usefulness of which has been most highly lauded, but at the same time the one for which the least has been done to favor its advancement.”