France, we must remember, was the home, during this century of Richelieu. Mazarin. Louis XIV. Corneille. Racine. Molière. Fénelou. La Fontaine. Boileau, Bossuet, and many other men eminent in literature and science. During this century the French laid the foundation for that leadership in surgery which they maintained for nearly two centuries. Let us mention, among their surgeons. Morel, who invented the tourniquet at the siege of Besançon, in the year 1674. There was also Jean Baptiste Denis (who died in 1704), physician to Louis XIV. who performed the first transfusion of blood in man. (Transfusion of the blood of the young into the veins of the old for the purposes of rejuvenation, was recommended by Libavius, in 1715, and Colle, of Padua, gave it new support by describing a method for its performance. In 1729 Boyle practiced transfusion on dogs. The London faculty sought the value of the operation after excessive haemorrhage, and Edmund King, physician to Charles II, in 1665 practiced transfusion from vein to vein. But Denis was the first to carry out the operation with lamb's blood upon a patient sinking under excessive venesection,—an operation which was very much abused at this time.) It was in this century that the French family of lithotomists—the Collots—distinguished themselves in their special line. The last member of the family, Francois, died in 1706. Their specialty must have found, at that time, considerable more material than comes to the front to-day.
Among the general surgeons of France were de Marque (1618), who distinguished himself as a bandager; Bienaise, who invented the bistoury caché (1601-1631); de Launay (1649), monk and lithotomist; Goursaud, who survived his century, and who was the first to describe stercoral incarceration; Duverney, who demonstrated the growth and nutrition of the bones by periosteum; Lambert, who practiced injections in hydrocele; Andry, of Lyons, who wrote of orthopaedic surgery and originated the name orthopaedics; Pierre Dionis (who died in 1718), surgeon to the Empress Maria Theresa, famous in his art, and who first emphasized the effects of rickets upon the pelvis; and Boulot, better known as Beaulieu (1671-1714). who advanced himself from being a soldier and a day-laborer to become a physician, a famous lithotomist and surgeon. He finally joined the Franciscan order, where he obtained the name of Frère Jacques, under which title he passed for the inventor of lateral lithotomy. Then there were Saviard (1656-1702), surgeon-in-chief in the Hôtel-Dieu, who, among other things, determined the seat of hernial strangulation to be often in the neck of the sac; and Georges Mareschal (1658-1736), surgeon to Louis XIV, one of the founders of the Academy of Surgery, who has a record of eight lithotomies performed in half an hour, and who became famous for his services in improving the schools of surgery in France.
In this (the seventeenth) century, also, ophthalmology was much cultivated in France, although it was assigned to the despised surgeons. Those who won most renown in this line were Maitre Jean and Brisseau, who divide the honor of first recognizing the seat of true cataract. During this period, also, Duverney, Professor of Anatomy at Paris, was the first to systematically describe diseases of the ear in accordance with their anatomical seat.
In Spain scholarship sank more rapidly during this century than among any other people in history, due mainly to the loss of their political supremacy and their commerce to the Dutch and English, and to the utter failure, at home, of their efforts to introduce true unity of faith. In these efforts the industrious Moors were excluded, under Philip III. In art they maintained their standing,—attaining, in fact, in Murillo, the acme of their fame; but in other branches of industry they rapidly degenerated. Students of history will readily understand how little leisure the Spaniards had at this time to devote to the cultivation of science, including medicine and surgery. Of the two men who are mentioned during this century as Spanish surgeons, namely, Almeida and Ayala, we know practically nothing.
The Germans gained no such store of knowledge from their experience during the Thirty Years' War as did the French during their campaigns. The barber-surgeons, for the most part, still reigned supreme, and their guild contained some men of ability and independence of thought. The most notable man of the times was Fabricius Hildanus (1560-1634). Of him, however, I have already spoken as belonging rather to the previous century. He was the first learned German surgeon recognized and esteemed as such by his contemporaries. He was distinguished, also, as an oculist and aurist, and removed a particle of iron from the cornea by means of a magnet. A man of great operative genius, and a born surgeon, was Purmann (1648-1721), who greatly lamented the low condition of surgery in Germany, and regarded a knowledge of anatomy as the prime requisite for the surgeon; he employed the speculum in the diagnosis of syphilis, although it has been Ricord's boast that this was his own idea. Scultetus (1595-1645), of Ulm, was a famous surgical writer of this period, and a bandage of his devising is still in frequent use, and bears his name. Murait, of Zürich, was also a capable surgeon (1655-1733).
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The Dutch had but few men during this century who enjoyed any reputation as surgeons. The best among them was Rau (1658-1719), who, from being a poor boy, became a barber, traveled extensively, and was finally made Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in Leyden, where he introduced the innovation of teaching practical surgery upon the cadaver. He was especially famous as a lithotomist after the method of Frère Jacques, although he did not give instruction on this subject in his lectures.