[Original]
Communication between master and pupil depended absolutely on the pleasure of the former.
In 1537 Paré was made surgeon to the Colonel-General of Infantry, René de Montijean, with whom he made his first campaign in Italy. (This was in the army which King Francis I assembled in Provence with which to repulse the invasion of Charles V.) He had never seen war nor recent gunshot wounds, and only knew of them by what he had read in the writings of John de Vigo. This was at a time when it was the custom of surgeons to pour boiling oil into every amputation or other wound in order to check haemorrhage; and Paré's experience in this, his first campaign, put him in the way of his first discovery,—a discovery which will never be forgotten. He has recounted in his Book of Arquebus Wounds and in his great Apology how after the affair of Pas-de-Suze he watched the other surgeons, dreaming of nothing else but to imitate them as far as he could; how the boiling oil gave out; how his anxiety about it prevented him from sleeping; and how to his great wonder he found that the wounded who had submitted to the operation suffered more than the others. This set him to thinking, and led him, a young man without name or authority, without letters or philosophical studies, to observe, to reason, and to combat a doctrine which was universally admitted and which the highest surgical authorities of the day sustained. At that time all authors who had spoken of gunshot wounds considered them as poisonous and complicated with burns; consequently they gave the precept to cauterize with boiling oil or a red-hot iron, and at the same time to administer certain alexipharmics which should serve as internal antidotes. John de Vigo, physician to Pope Julius II, assures us that the danger of these wounds results from the round formation of the balls, from heat, and from the poisonous qualities communicated to them by the powder. His theory and the method of treatment above given had been adopted without contradiction until the day when Paré dared to utter the first protest against them.
After a campaign of three years, in which he lost his master, he returned to Paris and married. In 1543 he was in the army of Perpignan, in the service of de Rohan, grand lord of Brittany, where he gave continuous proof of his sagacity. It was after this campaign that his reputation, so well established among warriors and the nobility, inspired Sylvius with the desire of seeing him. Paré has recounted how, in a conversation which they had together, he insisted upon the then entirely new precept, of which he had made many applications, that in order to extract bullets it was best to place the wounded in the position in which they were at the moment of injury.
[Original]
Sylvius, then at the height of his fame, invited the young physician to dinner, and listened to him with great attention while he explained his views on gunshot wounds, which made such an impression upon the mind of the host that he besought him eagerly to write them out and make them public. Encouraged by this advice from so high a source, Paré prepared his text, illustrated it, and in the year 1545 brought out his little work, which marked in a manner so glorious the revival of French surgery. It was published by Gaulterot, the sworn bookseller of the University of Paris, and was entitled "The Manner of Treating Wounds made by Arquebuses and other Fire-arms, and those made by Arrows, Darts, and the Like; and also by Burns made Especially by Gunpowder. Composed by Ambroise Paré, Master Barber-Surgeon in Paris."
A few months later appeared the second edition, in which he still recommended the actual cautery in haemorrhage; but each day he meditated upon the subject, and on one occasion discussed it with two surgeons of St. Come, submitting to them the idea that, since ligatures were applied to veins and arteries, and to recent wounds, there was nothing to prevent their being equally applied to amputations. Both agreed with him, and opportunity soon presented itself at the siege of Damvilliers, when a gentleman had his leg crushed by a shot from the fortress. Paré made an amputation, omitting for the first time the use of the cautery, and had the happiness to save his patient, who, full of joy at having escaped the red-hot iron, said he had got clear of his leg on very good terms. This was, in truth, the actual renaissance of surgery, which had been to that time a torture, but which became thereafter a blessed art. It was a barber-surgeon who produced the double marvel. This took place in 1552.
In 1554, after other campaigns, Paré was made, without examination, Master of the College of St. Come, and in 1559 was included among the surgeons of King Henry II (who was killed in a tourney, in Paris, in 1559)r which position he retained with Francis II and Charles IX. The latter raised him to the highest position among his surgeons, and King Henry III retained him, which caused the witty and true remark that the kings of France transferred him to their successors as a legacy of the crown.