He was sent upon many other missions of the same kind; as to the fields of St. Quentin and Moncontour; to Rouen, where he attended the Duc de Vendôme on occasion of the wound of which he died; and to St. Denys, where he performed the same unwelcome duty for the Constable. The long intervals of these services he always passed at court, in the enjoyment of his well-earned reputation and favour.
On the death of Henry II. in 1559, occasioned by an accident at a tournament, Francis II., his eldest son by Catherine de’ Medici, succeeded to the crown. He immediately confirmed Paré in his situation of surgeon in ordinary and counsellor. It will not be supposed that he could enjoy this constant favour and good fortune without the usual drawback in the excited jealousy of his professional rivals. Their rancour was at length carried to such a pitch, that they gravely accused him of causing the premature death of Francis in 1560, by injecting poison into his ear under the pretext of treating him for an inflammation seated there, of which he died. Catherine, however, shielded him from this attack, expressing her complete reliance on his integrity as well as his skill, in words which the historians of the period have preserved. A similar accusation was brought against him as unsuccessfully in the case of Henry III., who was afflicted with the same disorder: on which occasion the Queen-Mother again stood forward in his behalf, and his innocence was fully attested by the physicians whom she had placed about her son, and who had witnessed every application he made.
On the death of Francis II. in 1560, Paré maintained his place in the household of Charles IX., to whom it was thought he had rendered essential service after an injury inflicted on one of the nerves of the arm by an unlucky phlebotomist. This misfortune of his humbler brother was of great use to Paré, who, though a courtier during the predominance of the Guises, openly professed the Protestant faith; for it was probably the means of procuring him in Charles the only protector powerful enough to save him from being included in the general massacre of the Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day. Brantôme and Sully each connect his name with that event. The words of the former are as follows: “Le Roi quand il fût jour, ayant mis la tête a la fenêtre de sa chambre, et qu’il voyait aucuns dans le fauxbourg St. Germain qui se remuoient, et se sauvoient, il prit une grande arquebuse de chasse qu’il avoit, et en tira tout plein de coups à eux; mais en vain, car l’arquebuse ne tiroit si loin; incessamment crioit, ‘Tuez, tuez,’ en n’en vouloit sauver aucun si non Maître Ambroise Paré, son premier chirurgien, et le premier de la Chrestienté, et l’envoya querir et venir le soir dans sa chambre et garde robbe, commandant de n’en bouger; et disoit qu’il n’etoit raisonnable qu’un qui pouvoit servir à tout un petit monde, fûst ainsi massacré.”
“De tous ceux,” says Sully, “qui approchoient ce prince (Charles IX.) il n’y avoit personne qui eut tant de part à sa confiance qu’ Ambroise Paré. Cet homme qui n’etoit que son chirurgien, avoit pris avec lui une si grande familiarité, quoiqu’il fût Huguenot, que ce prince lui ayant dit le jour du massacre que c’etoit à cette heure qu’il falloit que tout le monde se fît catholique, Paré lui répondit sans s’étonner, ‘Par la lumière de Dieu, Sire, je crois qu’il vous souvient m’avoir promis de ne me commander jamais quatre choses; sçavoir, de rentre dans le ventre de ma mère, de me trouver à un jour de bataille, de quitter votre service, et d’aller à la messe.’”
Paré still retained his situation after the accession of Henry III. in 1574; but he seems to have resigned the cares of active life about that time, and we hear little more of him. He died December 2, 1590, in the eighty-first year of his life, and was buried in the church of St. André des Arcs in Paris.
Paré appears to have been a man of quick and independent observation rather than of reflection or genius. His constitution was vigorous, and fitted no less for social enjoyments than active business: his person was manly and graceful, his spirits buoyant, and his disposition remarkably amiable and attractive; hence he was a universal favourite, particularly in a despotic court, of which the dullness was agreeably relieved by his frankness, and his powers of humour and repartee. The amusing and well-told anecdotes and lively descriptions that teem in all his writings, which, it may be observed, are equal in point of style to any of the time, sufficiently attest his possession of those qualities, even if the stories and bon-mots that are related of him be questioned. His ‘Apology,’ as he calls one of his later pieces, containing an account of his various campaigns and journeys, is full of humour, and well worth the perusal of the general reader. It was published by way of answer to an attack upon his treatment of contused wounds and hæmorrhages, made by an obscure Parisian lecturer, whose name he does not mention; and he diverts himself exceedingly at the expense of the critic, for his presumption in pretending to teach a surgeon whose experience had been gathered from twenty sieges and fields of battle, through an active professional life of forty years. The raillery he employs is often very keen and pointed, but never ill-natured, and indicates the infinite superiority he felt, and had a right to feel, over his merely book-learned adversary.
His conduct throughout life appears to have been remarkably upright and sincere, though tinctured by the adulation which, in that age of violence and despotism, was always exacted by the great from those who were more humbly born.
He was a bold and good operator, and his general skill and success in the practice of his profession is unquestionable; in that day it must have been wonderful. As a surgical writer, his fame principally rests upon his introduction of a soothing method of treating gunshot and other contused wounds, and his discovery or rather restoration of the method of arresting hæmorrhage, by the ligature of the bleeding vessel, instead of searing with hot iron, and other insufficient and painful means. But he made many other novel and useful remarks which only do not deserve the name of discoveries, because they relate to more trivial points, and do not involve important principles: and, upon the whole, much as surgery has been improved since his time, there have been few writers to whom it has owed so much as to him, especially in the military department. The whole body of his writings on that subject, though diffuse, merit the perusal of professional men. The same praise cannot be given without exception and reserve to those of his writings which were less the records of his personal experience, than compilations from other sources. His remarks upon the subjects of Physiology, Medical Diseases, the Composition of Remedies, Natural History, and Obstetrics, are not free from error, credulity, and even indelicacy. The latter charge was successfully urged against him by the contemporary Parisian physicians, who were jealous of his encroachments upon what they considered their own domain, and he was obliged to alter the original editions.
He was too much occupied by his practice to engage deeply in the study of anatomy: hence his knowledge of it was rather sufficient than accurate; and though he wrote upon it at some length, and even added new facts to that science, his success in advancing it can only be considered as a proof of the imperfect information of the time. He lived before the discovery of the circulation of the blood.
His first publication, on Gunshot Wounds, in 1545, was incorporated with his other writings, comprising altogether twenty-six treatises, and printed at Paris in one large folio volume in 1561. This, with some posthumous additions, has been often reprinted, and there are translations of it in Latin and other languages. The first English edition was by Thomas Johnson in 1634.