Ambroise Paré and His Times, 1510-1590

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Preface

EVEN though a book goes over old ground, it may yet be welcome ; and Ambroise Park's life was so full of good works, adventure, and romance, that it ought to be known and honoured in other countries besides France. Therefore I have put these notes together, conveying into them the facts that have been established by Malgaigne, Le Paulmier, and other authors. We seldom hear his name in England : save that it is sometimes said he invented the ligature of arteries, which he did not; or he is mentioned in a First of October address to medical students; as was the fate of Hannibal in Juvenal's time — " Ut pueris placeas et dectamatio Ras." Such an address, perfect of its kind, given in 1889 by Mr. Godlee at University College Hospital, set me to work on this present venture.

To Malgaigne, who edited Park's works in 1840, and to MM, Le Paulmier, Bigin, and Turner we owe our knowledge of the details of his life. Dr.

vi Preface

Le Paulmier, himself descended from that Julien Le Paulmier who had a controversy with Par^ about gunshot wounds, has published a whole host of valuable documents ; parish registers, law reports, transfers of property, minutes of meetings, lists of the Royal household, and the like. From these, and from his own writings, we may almost know Ambroise Par^ as if he were living now.

By help of text-books of history, and the memoirs of Pierre de L'Estoile, I have made a sort of background of the times in which his fourscore years were spent. I had intended to set the Journeys in Diverse Places at the beginning of this book, making the rest of it a commentary upon them; but it seemed better, after all, to give them their proper place in the story of his life. Yet they, of course, are the one thing here to be read again and again.

Mr. Pater's Gastvn de Latour contains many exquisite pictures of France and of Paris, as Ambroise Par6 saw his country. But Gaston himself, while he recalls Ambroise's patient, the Marquis D'Auret, is no more like Par6 than my sentences are like the beauty of Mr. Pater's work.

By the kindness of Dr. Le Paulmier, I am allowed to reproduce the portrait and the autograph signature from his delightful book. The portrait, in the possession of Mme. La Marquise Le Charron,

LE TOUR nu TEMPLE.

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a descendant of one of Park's daughters, was painted when he was sixty-five: the signature was written on a receipt for some money, a year later. The other illustrations are from Park's books, from old prints in the British Museum, and from M, Martial's Ancien Paris. I hope that Mr. G. H. Putnam is right in his generous belief that what I have written is worthy of so many pictures.

London, 1897.

Contents

Introduction i

I. — Boyhood and Earlv Life. 15 10-1541 . 11 II. — " Journeys in Diverse Places." 1537-

1569 30

Introduction

Over tombi. amid graves — See I on the cuniber'd plain

Clearing a stage, Scattering tlie put abonC, Comes the new age."

Matthiw Ashold.

MALGAIGNE, in his long and learned introduction to the works of Ambroise ParS, has said that the way was cleared for his coming, and all Europe seemed waiting and watching for him. But a man like Pari is welcome whenever he comes ; nor are we here concerned with the history of surgery before he put his hand to it. From the time of Celsus, it was for the most part a history of decline and fall : the Arabian schools had set tradition and authority above observation and experiment ; and so long as the Church forbade the shedding of blood to the physicians, surgery was kept at the level of a low unorganised trade. Those who did great things in the Middle Ages for the practice of surgery may be counted on one hand: Constantine of Salerno, Guillaume de Salicetis, Lanfranc, Guy de Chauliac ; and perhaps, for England, John of Gaddesden and John Ardern. And Guy de Chauliac — whose writings were expounded to Par£ during his apprenticeship — ^was a man after Park's own heart : —

'* Let the surgeon be well educated, skilful, ready, and courteous. Let him be bold in those things that are safe, fearful in those that are dangerous ; avoiding all evil methods and practices. Let him be tender with the sick, honourable to men of his profession, wise in his predictions ; chaste, sober, pitiful, merciful ; not covetous or extortionate ; but rather let him take his wages in moderation, according to his work, and the wealth of his patient, and the issue of the disease, and his own worth." *

The service that these few great men did for surgery was twofold: they made a stand against the Arabian school, against Averroes and Avicenna, and they mostly wrote or translated in their mother-tongue, endeavouring to return past tradition to the pure teaching of Hippocrates. Malgaigne has been

* From the Grande Chirurgie of Guy de Chauliac, written in 1363, when he was physician to Pope Urban V. at Avignon.

Introduction 3

careful to show how their work, long after they were dead, was brought to life again by the invention of printing, the discovery of the New World, and the return of the Renaissance to Greek art and manuscripts :• —

"The hunt for Greek manuscripts was started on behalf of literature and theology : afterward came the turn of the sciences. A copy of Celsus was found in 1443 at Milan ; Paulus iCgineta also was discovered about the same time ; finally, several Greek manuscripts of Hippocrates and of Galen were unearthed. Men could now set the writings themselves against the translations and commentaries of the Arabians : Aristotle against AverroSs, Galen against Avicenna. The commentator was often far gone from the sense and spirit of the original, and a choice must be made between them ; and since the only ruling philosophy was still faith in authority, the oldest authority was judged to be the best : men left the Arabian standard and rallied round Hippocrates and Galen. This might seem only a change of masters, but it was not to be done without revolt. Soon they began to mistrust even their new masters : Aristotle did not always agree with Plato, nor Galen always with himself."

The great iconoclast was still to come: and this was Paracelsus. Born in 1493, more than a century after the death of Guy de Chauliac, and neither courteous, pitiful, nor sober, he yet had the strength for the work that must be done. He is the very incarnation of the spirit of free thought in medicine, the man above all others who broke the Arabian schools, and struck at the solemn rubbish taught at the Universities. He had the courage to begin his lectures at Basel (1526) by lighting some sulphur in a brasier, and casting into it the books of Galen, Averroes, and Avicenna. ** Sic vos ardebitis in Gehenn& " was his judgment on them ; and he went on with his lecture part in Latin part in German. This was six years after Luther had burned the Pope's Bull, and the volumes of the canon law, at Wittenberg; and four years after his translation of the Bible. The same spirit moved two men so unlike : and it would be pleasant to write an essay on the hundred best books that have been burned.

When Paracelsus began lecturing, Ambroise Par6 was sixteen years old. He was not much concerned at any time of his life with art, or literature, or logic, or philosophy. He was fond of animals, and had something of an ear for music, and a taste for poetry; but he learned no Greek or Latin in his boyhood, was not a student at any University, and cared for no country in the world save France. He thought for himself in surgery, but was no rebel against authority like that fallen angel Paracelsus: nor is there anything to show that he ever used his influence at the Court to help or hinder a political in-

Introduction 5

trigue. Yet that his life may stand in proper relief, here must be noted some of the great changes that were at work on the nations while he lived.

In the year of his birth, 1 5 10, Louis XII. was King of France, Maximilian was Emperor, Henry VIII. was King of England. During his life, the crown of France passed from Louis XII. to Frangois I., then to Henri IL, then to his three sons in succession, Fran9ois IL, Charles IX., and Henri III., and then to Henri IV. In England, Edward VI. succeeded to his father's throne, then Mary, then Elizabeth. The Empire passed from Maximilian to Charles V., and afterward to Philip of Spain. If we would measure Park's life by English history, he was bom three years before the battle of Flodden Field, and died a year and four months after the destruction of the Armada. When Luther burned the Pope's Bull, and Raphael died at Rome, and the Kings of France and England met on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Ambroise was a boy ten years old. At the death of Bayard, fourteen ; at the fall of Wolsey, twenty. When Calais was taken from England he was forty-eight ; and following the fortunes of war, he served against the English in Brittany in 1543, at Boulogne in 1545, and at Havre in 1563: — perhaps the only army surgeon who has twice seen discretion outweigh valour with English soldiers.

But the fighting between France and England was nothing to him in comparison with the wars against Germany, Italy, and Spain. Other nations were involved in them — Switzerland and the Netherlands ; the King of Catholic France made secret advances in 1535 toward the German Protestants, and openly allied himself in 1543 with the Sultan Suleiman; the favour of the Pope was now to the one side, now to the other; Italy was invaded again and again. From 1537 to 1558, the one great enemy against whom he served was the Emperor Charles V., or at the last his son, Philip of Spain, with their German and Spanish armies, and their Italian and English auxiliary forces; then, at the siege of Rouen in 1562, he first saw civil war, his country divided against herself, Catholic against Huguenot.

Before he died, the wheel had come full circle. From Louis XII. to Henri IV., from the battle of Spurs to the battle of Ivry, from Flodden Field to the Armada — ^whichever way his fourscore years are measured, they were long enough for a whole cycle of changes ; and the great events through which he lived mark alike the length of his days, and the opportune moment of his death. As he grew older, the times got worse. All his life he had been in the midst of wars; but at first France was fighting a foreign enemy, Germany, Spain, or England ; later,

Introduction 7

came civil war, the wars of religion, and the massacres of the Huguenots; finally, the long death-struggle between Henri HI. and the Guises, and the siege of Paris by Henri IV. All his life he had been under a despotism ; but the Kings moved on a downward grade, with the influence of the Queen-Mother heavy on all three of her sons. All his life, he had a great love of the poor ; but their misery reached its zenith in IS90> when during the siege they died, thousands of them, from starvation.

If Ambroise Par£ had come to his end three years sooner than he did, he would have gone without hope for France. Between 1587 and i590> the whole scene changed. In March, 1 587, came the news of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots ; in August, 1588, the Armada was destroyed; in December of the same year came the murder of the Guises. In January, 1589, the Queen-Mother died ; in August the King was assassinated. The battle of Ivry was fought on March 14, 1S90, and Paris was besieged by Henri IV. that same summer. And then, at the last, only four months before his death, in the eightieth year of his life, we read in the memoirs of Pierre de L'Estoile the exquisite story how Par6 spoke his mind to the great Archbishop of Lyon, the chief leader of the League, the sworn enemy of the Huguenots. The two men met just outside Park's house ; and at the sight of him, Par6 broke down, not with rage, but with the misery of standing in his old age among the dead and dying, face to face with a priest who was furious against peace : —

'* I remember about eight or ten days at most before the siege was raised, Monseigneur the Archbishop, going over the end of the Pont Saint Michel, when he found his way blocked by a crowd of those who were dying of hunger, they cried out to him begging for bread or else for death ; he not knowing what to say to them. Master Ambroise Par^ meets him, and says to him in a loud voice, * Monseigneur, this poor people that you see here round you are dying of the cruel pains of famine, and they ask pity of you. For God's sake. Monsieur, have pity on them, if you want God to have pity on you ; think a little of the high place to which God has called you, and how the cry of these poor men and women goes up to Heaven, and is a warning sent you by God, to remind you of the duties of your office, for which you have to answer to Him. Therefore, by that office and by the power that we all know you have, bring about peace for us, and give us a way of living, for the poor can no longer help themselves. Do you not see that all Paris is dying, because of the villains who wish to prevent peace, which is the special work of God? Set your whole strength against them, Monsieur ; take in hand the cause of this poor afflicted people, and God will bless you and repay you.' Monseigneur the Archbishop said nothing, or next to nothing ; only he was patient to hear him out and not interrupt him, which was not his

Introduction 9

usual way ; and he said afterward the good man had fairly astonished him ; and again, this was not the sort of politics he was wont to hear talked ; and Master Par^ had waked him up, and made him think of many things."

The siege was raised on the 29th of August : Ambroise Par6 died before the end of the year : —

" On Thursday, December the twentieth, the eve of Saint Thomas, at Paris in his own house, died Master Ambroise Par^, the King's surgeon, eighty years old, a learned man, and the chief of all surgeons ; who, even against the times, all his life talked and spoke openly for peace and for the people ; which made him as much beloved by the good as he was begrudged an4 hated by the wicked."

He lived into the beginning of better things for France. It was a long life, from Louis XII. to Henri IV., from Maximilian to Philip of Spain, from Henry VIII. to Elizabeth. Among his cotemporaries* were Ignatius Loyola and Saint Theresa, Luther and Erasmus, Calvin and Knox, Shakespeare and Rabelais, Raphael and Titian, Paracelsus, Servetus, Sylvius, and Vesalius. He

* Bernard Palissy, the potter, was bom the same year as Ambroise ; and the two old men were together in Paris so late as 1589, Pare in his home, Palissy in the Bastille. In Lent, iS7Si Bernard Palissy gave three lectures in Paris, "On Springs, Stones, Metals, and Other Natures." (There is something in the title of these lectures that suggests a likeness between Palissy and Mr. Ruskin.) The price of admission was a crown ; and Park's name is on the subscribers' list.

lo Ambroise Par^ followed the wars, off and on, for thirty-two years ; he practised in Paris for more than half a century, and was surgeon to four kings; and even against the times he kept his hands clean, and his heart full of sympathy. He has been called the John Baptist of surgery, in the sense that he prepared the way for surgeons after him ; but it would be hard to find a worse mistake than this. He never dreamed of modem surgery ; he made no final change in the principles of his art, he only cared to practise it. Yet he has a right to the name ; for he stood for the truth at the court of more than one Herod, and ever looked to see the deliverance of his country.