THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF AMBROISE PARÉ

AMPUTATION AND PROSTHETICIN IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Hello!

So, I’ve had more than enough time to write a post for this week’s Substack but here I am on a Sunday night, typing away in a pure panic! …sorry if this one is a little short. One man I learnt about at university was Ambroise Paré, A French man whose name I butchered many times during my presentation. His contributions to the medical field were fantastic and that’s what I want to tell you all about today.

Paré was an extremely successful French barber surgeon (born 1510) who spent a lot of his medical career on the battle field. Here, the introduction of guns was causing more life altering injuries such as the loss of limbs. These injuries caused the rate of suicide to spike significantly so Paré made it his mission to help these men. He began designing prosthetics, although he wasn’t the first person in history to do so. He pushed to make prosthetics more functional. He designed legs that had mechanical knees and arms that had pulley systems that worked in a similar way to muscles.

One of Paré’s most famous designs was a prosthetic hand, which was then produced in 1551 and worn into battle by a French Army Captain.

“The captain was able to grip and release the rein of his horse.”

The design can be found in his book Les Oeuvres. Along with some of his tool designs and some very strange mythical beast things? I’m not too sure what they are but they’re very weird, you should absolutely check it out.

Paré’s prosthetic arm design from his book Les Oeuvres

Paré also changed the way surgery was performed on the wounds of lost limbs. The general practice was to cauterise the wound with hot oil, however this would cause further infection and was extremely painful. They did this because they thought gun powder was poisonous and the oil would burn away the poison. One day, Paré had run out of oil and decided to use a mixture of egg yolks, rose oil and turpentine to dress the wounds. He found that the soldiers were able to sleep through the night and were less feverish than those who had oil on their wounds. He made the decision then, to never use hot oil as a remedy again, he showed that there were less painful ways to help people with life threatening injuries.

Paré was a fantastic anatomist and surgeon, earning him the role of royal surgeon to four French Monarchs Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III. He changed the idea of amputation and prosthetics, showing that people didn’t have to suffer through painful treatment. There are many more discoveries Paré made, he defined what a concussion was, calling it a “shake of the brain” but you can read all about his other anatomical and medical discoveries here.

I hope you enjoyed todays post about Ambroise Paré, I would really appreciate if you could either like, subscribe or share this post (you get extra points if you do all of the above), and if you have any questions, history based or otherwise feel free to leave a comment.

All the best,

Savannah

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