May 17, 2021 • 35 mins
Sixteenth-century barber surgeon Paré has been called everything from “the gentle surgeon” to “the father of modern surgery.” He advanced the field of medicine significantly during his 50+ years in practice.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Oh, it's
more medical history. So exciting. I've been doing so much
(00:22):
over the pandemic um and we've just had lots of
medical things come up. But this time we're going to
talk about early surgery, and I mean very early surgery.
We're going to talk about Amboise Parrey, who has been
called everything from the gentle surgeon to the father of
modern surgery, and he really really did advance the field
of medicine significantly during his fifty plus years in practice.
(00:43):
And just for a level set, so you get a
sense of how ahead of of other things we've talked
about he is. When we recently talked about Jean Baptiste
Deny in our two parter about the development of blood transfusions,
those events took place more than one hundred years after
what we're talking think about today. And when we talked about,
for example, uh Scottish surgeon Robert Liston, who was famed
(01:06):
for his speedy amputations, that was three hundred years after Parrey.
And so first though to set the stage, we have
to talk a little bit about barber surgeons and some
of the other stuff that was going on in Europe
regarding this trade leading up to the sixteenth century, which
is when Parrey was doing his work, and then we
will get into Amboise Parrey's story. Now, when you sent
(01:28):
me um, when I asked what you were working on
this week and you told me, I googled it and
saw the word surgeon and then saw the year and
kind of went Woa. We've talked about some very early
surgical history before, but it was this was one that
jumped out at me. So yes, I'm glad you picked it. Yea.
So before we get into Paris story, as Holly just said,
(01:50):
we need to have a little overview of barber surgeons
and where they were at when he was working in
this field. We have mentioned barber surgeons before, I don't
think we've really talked about the origins of barber surgeons
and how exactly we got to a point that you
would hire the same person to shave your face as
you would to extract a tooth or amputate a limb,
(02:13):
so wide range of job responsibilities. It seems like such
a strange grouping today, but for a long time I
was totally normal. Yeah, and we know that specialists in
grooming go all the way back to ancient Egypt. But
there's this question of like, when did the cosmetic occupation
take on all of these other duties? So the answer
(02:33):
to that lies in the Hippocratic Oath. We won't read
the whole thing. It is quite long. It includes a
lot of language about holding your teacher in the same
regard as your parents, and administering healthy diets and all
kinds of other things. But the section of it that's
germane to today's topic is this quote, I will not
use the knife, not even on sufferers from Stone, but
(02:54):
will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged
in this work. So we should note two things here
because you also may have heard or read a different
version of the Hippocratic Oath. First, the oath was originally
written in Greek, so obviously there are translations. Second, there
is a modern version that is quite different, and you
may have heard that one. That one, though, was not
(03:15):
written until nineteen sixty four, so long long after m.
Bois Paray's time. It was written by Toughs University academic
dean of the School of Medicine, Louis Lasagna, that phrase,
though about not using the knife on patients, meant that
if somebody did need surgery, there has to be a
different profession who could handle it. Physicians could take care
(03:36):
of their patients in every way that didn't require surgery,
but then if things reached a point where a knife
was involved, then the patient needed to be handed off
to someone else, so a surgeon, or very often a
barber surgeon. So, from their beginnings which had the religious
significance of being in charge of things like tonsuring clergy,
(03:57):
barber's over time adopted additional do ease as standard for
the barber trade. Needs like bleeding or tooth extraction were
handled by barbers for the simple reason that in eleven
sixty three, monks, who up to that point had been
providing services like blood letting, were then forbidden to do
so by a papal decree issued by Pope Alexander the Third.
(04:19):
So at this point Hippocrates has said that physicians can't
do it, and the papal decrease said that, uh, none
of the monks could do anything like this. So additionally,
actual trained surgeons were pretty thin on the ground. Uh
So the role of the barber continued to expand to
include more and more complex procedures until barber surgeon had
(04:40):
emerged as a career. Basically, basically, somebody in Europe's got
to do it, and that's where we landed. In London.
The Worshipful Company of Barbers, which was founded in the
early hundreds and still exists, was a guild for the
barber profession and it supported this exp ending role. But
(05:01):
there were also surgeons who were just surgeons. They had
made their careers specializing in that field. So naturally this
led to some tension. Barber surgeons felt that they were
filling a really vital need for their clientele, and they were,
but surgeons felt that barber surgeons were beneath them and
they didn't have the same skill level because they hadn't
(05:23):
learned Latin or gone to university, and that these combination
shops that handled the tasks of multiple professions should really
just be relegated to the country, where professionals in general
were a lot more sparse. But most surgeons were employed
by royal or high ranking households exclusively, so even in
the city there was still a lot of need for
(05:44):
somebody who could do all of this stuff to compound matters.
A lot of doctors thought that some of the tasks
that a barber surgeon could perform, like blood letting, was
really beneath them. In the nineteen two paper, R. S.
Roberts wrote quote, despite the pretensions of the physicians, it
was impossible to keep medicine, surgery and pharmacy as separate activities,
(06:07):
and a more general form of practice which combined all
that was necessary did develop in London just as quickly
as the provinces. There was so much strife in London
over all of this that Henry the Eighth surgeon Thomas
Lineaker used his influence with the King to ask that
some sort of supervisory guidelines be put in place for surgeons.
(06:28):
Similar requests for medical regulation came from other scholars who
had the King's ear, and for just about the entirety
of Henry the Eighth's reign, there was this sort of
constant effort and struggle to get London on par with
other cities in terms of medical licensing and education. In
fifteen forty, the Company of Barber Surgeons was formed and
that combined the two professions although surgeons and barber surgeons
(06:51):
were still separate things, but under this larger group medical
care was regulated. In France. The two had joined under
one guild eighty years earlier. In three during the reign
of Charles the sixth of France, the king's first barber
and valet was made head of that guild. But then
Paris had its own complexities and conflicts in the medical field.
(07:13):
Barber surgeons were sometimes called doctors of the short robe,
with doctors of the long robe being used to refer
to members of the Confraternity of Saint Come. These were
theoretically surgeons, although they often had sort of a snooty
attitude it seems, about performing surgery themselves. These doctors of
the long robe had a lot of friction with the
(07:35):
university trained physicians and with the barber surgeons. It's made
Paris a very contentious place to practice medicine at all.
It's so soon. All of the posturing that goes on
in the hierarchy of these medical fields is very fascinating
to me. There was reformed to this very problematic system
(07:55):
just before m boise Pere was born. The Faculty de
medicent assigned on a course of action to try to
alleviate the tension by making barber surgeon a legitimate licensed title.
That meant the barber surgeons could attend classes at the
university and they had to take two exams after completing
their training in order to be licensed. As part of
(08:16):
this reformation, the existing surgeons could move up in title
to doctor's region at the faculty. So this ended up
consolidating these three factions into two, and it elevated both
barber surgeons and surgeons. And while this did not by
any means eliminate all of these problems and posturing, it
definitely did improve things and m las Pie was working
(08:39):
in the medical field right in the middle of this
unique and sometimes tense culture. We will talk about his
life and career in just a moment, but first we
will pause for equick sponsor break a. Boise Parrey was
born in fifteen o nine or ten in Burgersson in
(09:02):
western France, and his path in medicine was actually set
fairly early on. Both he and his brother were set
on educational tracks to become surgeons by their father, who
was not in the medical field but did well for
himself as a master carpenter. One of the key pieces
of education that a surgeon needed was Latin, and a
(09:22):
working knowledge of Latin was considered vital for that career,
but and was never quite mastered it. That was even
though he had been sent to a boarding school that
was run by a chaplain who could focus on that language. Yes,
and there was a lot of very dedicated educational effort
to getting him to learn Latin, but that was just
(09:43):
not happening. When he was in his early twenties, Parray
traveled to Paris to pursue a position as an apprentice.
Despite his Latin still lacking, he did get an apprenticeship
with a master barber surgeon, so that at that point
was the only possible path because that Latin requirement was
not quite as vital for a barber surgeon. He didn't
really get a whole lot of time with the surgeon
(10:05):
part of the job, though. He mostly tied it up
in a shop by sweeping hair and he was occasionally
allowed to give beard trims. This was not, we should say,
because his mentor was particularly cruel. The shop just had
to be maintained during business hours, so most apprentices faced
kind of similarly challenging schedules. There just wasn't really a
way to attend medical lectures because of this, unless they
(10:28):
were lectures that were given unusually early in the morning
or late in the evening, so study of the surgery
side of the job was usually done via late night reading,
although there were some procedures like leaching that were taught
their hands on in the shop. I accepted this sometimes
ruling schedule and he applied himself to get to his
(10:49):
goal of being accredited as a barber surgeon. But the
diploma from the Master Barber was really just the first step.
The next phase of his education was pretty similar to
the way a modern medical doctor goes through a residency
training period. For Paris, this meant a surgeon trainee position
at Hotel du de Paris starting in two As an
(11:11):
assigned the Hotel Dieu may one debut its own episode.
It is the oldest operating hospital in the world, It
still operates and it has its roots reaching back at
least eleven hundred years. But for the purposes of m
Boise Pareis story, the key here is that the hotel
had started as a home for the poor of Paris
that eventually added medical care for the residents to its mission.
(11:33):
And it had actually become essentially a teaching hospital by
Parreise time. There was also sort of a weird setup
for surgical training because the hospital was run by the church,
and the church looked upon cutting a human body as anathema.
This meant that any kind of actual surgery that m
bois Parres was able to perform had to be on
(11:54):
deceased patients. The hospital was packed, though it was often
really overcrowded, with patients having to share beds, so he
had plenty to do. Over the course of four years,
he provided care to thousands of residents, including through a
cholera outbreak, and he studied surgery in books and by
doing autopsies. But even though he had done all this
(12:16):
hands on training and work to qualify for a surgical license,
stories go that this lack of Latin continued to hold
him back. He was not able to obtain a license.
But really most accounts indicate that it wasn't so much
the Latin issue. It was that he was too poor
to take the required certification exam. Yeah, the Latin hold
back is like a nice story, but it really seems
(12:39):
more to have been a financial issue. Regardless though, of
which of those factors was the one holding him back.
He ended up on another path, and that was one
that would enable him to practice medicine even if he
did not have a license, and that was as a
member of the French military, Paray was able to get
a position as the surgeon attending the General Martial de
Monjan and the impact this role had on the way
(13:02):
Parreis practiced medicine and consequently a lot of other people.
UH kind of reminds me a little bit of the
episode we did about fame Chef Augusta Scofier, because if
you heard that one and recall it, A Scofier had
learned to improvise really impressive meals for the troops that
he cooked for with minimal supplies during his time in
the military. UH and m Boise Parre in kind of
(13:23):
a similar move improvised treatment of wounds when his medical
supplies ran low. Paia described a key moment and his
military career during the fifteen thirty seven Siege of Turin
when he ran out of the oil that they normally
boiled to cauterize amputation and gunshot wounds. This is the
treatment that he had always felt was often really damaging
(13:44):
and risky to the soldiers, So it is very easy
to the modern ear to immediately hear that whole boiling
oil thing and think, WHOA, what were they thinking? They're
so foolish. Keep in mind, though, this is really still
pretty early in the use of gunpowder artillery in ar Uh.
There are references to artillery on battlefields as early as
the mid fourteenth century, but in the years between then
(14:07):
and when Parrey was deployed, the use of such weapons
had grown pretty slowly. In the Italian wars which Parret
found himself part of as France and Spain battled over
control of Italian territories, were marked by a significant uptick
in the amount and variety of firearms used, and there
was still a commonly held belief that there was poison
(14:28):
in gunpowder, so the oil was thought to somehow counter that.
Parret listed the weapons of war, and his writing as
quote all sorts of minds, countermines, pots of fire, trains,
fiery arrows, lances, crossbows, barrels, balls of fire, and all
(14:49):
such fiery engines and inventions. They are certainly a most
miserable and pernicious kind of invention by which we often
see a thousand unsuspecting men blown up with a mind
by the force of gunpowder. For these modern inventions are
such as easily exceed all the best appointed and cruel engines,
which can be mentioned or thought upon in the shape, cruelty,
(15:12):
and appearance of their operations. Yeah, as many physicians, he
had very strong opinions about firearms, But his improvisation in
this moment and its results changed the way he looked
at medicine forever, and he wrote about it. This is translated. Obviously.
At last my oil ran short, and I was forced
instead thereof to apply a digestive made of the yolks
(15:34):
of eggs, oil of roses, and turpentine. In the night
I could not sleep in quiet, fearing some default in
not cauterizing that I should find the sounded to whom
I had not used the said oil dead from the
poison of their wounds, which made me rise very early
to visit them, where beyond my expectation, I found that
those to whom I had applied my digestive medicament had
(15:56):
but little pain in their wounds, without inflammation or swelling,
having rested fairly well that night. The others to whom
the boiling oil was used, I found feverish, with great
pain and swelling about the edges of their wounds. Then
I resolved never more to burn thus cruelly poor men
with gunshot wounds. So to be clear, this was hugely risky.
(16:19):
If these soldiers had died because of Pare's experimental treatment,
not only would he have felt responsible, he also probably
would have been kicked out of the military. Additionally, it
would have also likely ended any hope he had of
being a barber surgeon beyond the battlefield. So it's really
no surprise that he couldn't sleep. And this discovery that
(16:40):
an alternate approach to treating wounds, one that did not
involve pouring boiling oil on already suffering patients, was successful,
gave Paris a new degree of confidence. He started to
extol the virtues of observing patients and treating based on
assessment of the individual, rather than only going by what
appeared in books as the prescribed method for a particular
(17:02):
type of injury. He had also decided from that moment
that he would only use treatments that he truly believed
to be useful, So in a way, he was making
a conscious decision to trust his instincts because he had
always suspected that scalding oil was not the best idea,
but now he had experiential proof that another approach created
a far better outcome. Up to the time that he
(17:24):
became a military medic, Claret's knowledge about surgery was like
most medical professionals of the time, based on the writings
of Galen. Galen moved medical practice forward in a lot
of ways. He clarified understanding of anatomy, particularly the circulatory
system and the workings of respiration, and he also did
a lot of surgeries. He cared for gladiators and accompanied
(17:47):
Marcus Aurelius into battle to care for the troops, so
he had plenty of injuries to treat and to learn from.
But Galen lived in the first century, so a lot
of his ideas were outdated by the I Parry was working,
even though he was still a really key part of
standard medical education. His writing, for example, was based on
(18:07):
the idea of bodily humors that Hippocrates had developed. Most
of the early sixteenth century medical profession still had an
almost dogmatic devotion to following Galen's writings to the letter,
even though Galen himself wrote about the importance of personal observation.
Paris continued to elevate the care of wounded soldiers as
a field medic and surgeon over the course of several
(18:30):
military tours, and that dedication paid off. Although he was
encouraged to stay in the military because of his usefulness.
In fifteen forty one he returned to Paris and he
was able to take the necessary examinations that he needed,
and he was given the title of Master barber surgeon.
He also got married after he went home to Paris,
and he basically set himself up with a house and
(18:51):
a shop in what is modern day Place de Michel.
Pire went back to the military in fifteen forty two
when he was selected by the Grand Lord of Britain
name to be his surgeon on campaigns. It was during
this phase of military touring that Parre developed a new
technique for dislodging bullets from wounds by having the wounded
person placed their body in the position they had been
(19:13):
in when they were shot, so that he could more
easily track the bullets trajectory. It seems like such a
cool and interesting thing, rather than people digging around in
wounds going how exactly were you standing. I see it
entered here. It probably went here. It seems so obvious,
and yet was not standard at all. And one of
the reasons that we know about m. Bois Pararey's experiences
(19:34):
and his refinement of surgical techniques is because he wrote
numerous books on those subjects. And we're going to talk
about the beginning of his work as an author after
we hear from some of the sponsors that keep stuff
you missed in history class going. After he returned to
(19:55):
Paris again and on the advice of one of the
physicians at the Faculty de Midicant, and started writing about
his work. And this is where not having learned Latin
actually helped make him even more well known. He wrote
in French that was unusual for medical texts, and as
a consequence, it made them accessible to a far wider audience.
(20:17):
Whereas the use of Latin in the medical field had
always been a separator between the well educated and the masses,
Parei's work disregarded that divide, and to some degree it
democratized medical knowledge. Barber surgeons were no longer left out
of the conversation. They were reading the exact same text
as master surgeons. When it came to Parais's work. The
(20:38):
use of French for his writing also meant that translations
of his works went into circulation really quickly. Soon there
were printings of paris writings in English, German and Dutch,
and they spread quickly throughout all of Europe. And because
of this, his ideas created a true watershed moment in
medical history where practitioners started re examining some pretty long
(21:00):
held truths. His first book was published in and it
was titled The Method of Treating Wounds made by arquebuses
and other firearms, darts and such. Also combustion made especially
by cannon powder. So just as quick aside, an arc
bus was a long gun sort of a precursor to
the musket. And the preface to that book really evidences
(21:22):
pires religious devotion. It is dedicated quote to young surgeons
of goodwill, and after a few opening lines about how
he was asked to share his knowledge of treating wounds,
it reads quote, not presuming in my present capacity being
able to teach you, for which more instruction would be necessary,
but to satisfy your desire in part, and also stimulate
(21:44):
some higher spirit by writing in this way, so we
can all give it greater attention. Now I ask you
humbly to take this little book kindly, which, if I
know you are agreeable, will cause me to do something
more such as my small mind can undertake, or such
I pray the creator, brothers and friends to happily support
our work by his grace, always increasing our good affections,
(22:07):
so that something fruitful and useful can come of it.
To the support of the infirmity of human life, and
to the honor of the one in whom are hidden
all the treasures of science, who is the eternal God.
This religious reference is also reflected in a phrase that's
often associated with pie, which is jo la PASSI do
(22:28):
the guree, which is I bandaged him. God cured him
parre with a lot of course study. In his early years,
you'll remember he did a lot of book learning combined
with his situational experience on the battlefield. Wrote about the
various changes to treatments that he had developed while in
military service, and this of course included his opinion that
hot oil lad to pain that could be avoided in
(22:50):
amputation situations, and that the oil could actually damage the
tissue and slow healing. He continually worked to be objective
about reconsidering old methods of doing things as compared to
his new ideas. He never presumed that his way was better,
and he always offered reasoned explanations and situations where he
felt that surgeons should perhaps update their practice to include
(23:11):
new techniques. In all of his writings, the really pervasive
aspect of it is that he speaks of compassion and
kindness and remembering that saving lives is worth the effort.
This isn't necessarily common in medical text at this time,
so it was very unusual, and all of this led
to his nickname in history as the Gentle Surgeon. In
(23:32):
fifteen fifty he published his second book, which was Brief
Collection for the Conduct of Anatomy, and once that was out,
he started editing and updating his first book for release
as a second edition. Right after that second edition project,
he was once again attending to soldiers on the battlefield
with uh. The medics under Vicom de Rohan and Parey
(23:53):
is said to have gone to great efforts to save
a soldier who everyone believed was going to die. They
had actually already dug a grave for him, and that
his dedication to saving even the lowest ranking of the
troops gained him great admiration and loyalty among the men.
During this deployment, Paris started to use ligatures to tie
off vessels during amputations, abandoning the use of hot iron cauterization.
(24:17):
When the city of Myts was overwhelmed by the forces
of Emperor Charles the fifth and Boise, Pari was snuck
past the occupation forces so that he could treat trapped
soldiers there. Because of this and his extraordinary service throughout
his military assignments, King Henry the second of France appointed
him to be one of the King's surgeons. This honor
came with some strings, though, because after the battles in Lochen,
(24:41):
Parrey had returned home to his practice in Paris in
fifteen fifty three, only to have the king ordered him
almost immediately to another battlefield in Ada, where the situation
was quite dire, and Parrey were day and night to
try to treat the overwhelming number of wounded. Things grew
even more precarious when Parey was taken prisoner along with
the rest of the French garrison. He disguised himself at
(25:04):
this point as a low ranking soldier so that his
identity would not be revealed at this point. Remember, his
stuff had started to be translated and spread throughout Europe,
so people knew who he was, and he knew that
like that could potentially endanger him or cause his captors
to ask for a very high ransom. But he did
continue to treat people medically during this time, and he
(25:24):
actually managed to secure his freedom by treating an enemy
officer I believe it was for an ulcer on his leg.
And he returned to King Henry the Second and gave
his report before once again at least attempting to return
to his civilian life. In fifteen fifty four, his career
took another step forward. He was granted the title of
master Surgeon, in part because the surgeons of the city
(25:47):
knew it would make them look good. He became the
surgeon attending King Francis the Second. Yeah, this is actually
pretty pivotal, where somebody who came up as a barber
surgeon suddenly all of the snoop to your levels of
the medical establishment were like no, no, no, you're one
of us, You're famous and stuff. Um. He was sent
(26:10):
on two more military campaigns, at San Quentin and der Lain,
and when Charles the ninth became King of France. Parrey
was once again in that monarch service. As the French
Wars of Religion began. They dominated Parei's professional life just
as other conflicts had, because he was ordered to treat
soldiers at the request of the crown. Although he was
(26:30):
sent away from Paris less and less often, likely because
at this point he was getting a bit older. Parke
continued to write, and in fifteen sixty four he released
a highly illustrated project titled Ten Books of Surgery, with
the magazine of the instruments necessary for it. He also
developed a specialized clamp called a becht de carbat, which
(26:51):
is a crow's beak and that would help hold a
vessel closed to keep patients from bleeding out. This was
using cases where a wound had severn the vessel and
the surgeon could quickly stem the bleeding with the clamp
to improve survival rates. He also invented a number of
other clamps with similarly charming names, the beck de glu
in English as the crane's beak uh and another called
(27:13):
a duck's beak that's a beckt gun. We're both developed
for bullet extraction. These were long and thin, so they
could reach deep into the tissue to get to a
bullet without having to widen the entry wound too much.
That was an ongoing problem. Again, Paris focus on preserving
the tissue and treating the patient as gently as possible
is driving his innovation. Gentle handling of patients and their
(27:37):
tissue was just a really important part of Pare's writing
and work. It was accepted and also expected that patients
would have incredible pain during surgery. If you recall our
episode on Scottish surgeon Robert Liston, which was in the
eighteen hundreds, you may remember that he became famous for
his speed at surgical procedures and was deemed to be
(28:00):
a showboater because of it, But his real goal with
that was to keep the patient's pain as brief as possible. Similarly,
m bois Parare, several centuries before that, was also trying
to be as brief as possible with the scalpel and
to be as gentle as you possibly could in the
hopes of minimizing suffering. Long before it was customary, and
(28:22):
Bois Parret was encouraging the medical profession to embrace the
idea of pain management for patients as well as more
comprehensive follow up care on the part of the surgeon.
So he, like a lot of people, dispensed opium for
postop recovery. Although this wasn't just like a blanket thing
to knock people out. He was trying to really like
carefully determine how much they needed to help them with
(28:44):
their pain. And at a time when surgeons typically kind
of performed a procedure and then left any after care
to physicians and nurses, he believed in remaining part of
the recovery team for the patient after that surgery was completed.
When Charles the Ninth died in fifteen seventy four, Parre
remained the king's surgeon under the new regent that was
Charles's brother, Henry the Third. He was also elevated to
(29:07):
the position of Vale de Chambre Pare served Henry the
Third until the king's assassination in fifteen eighty nine. In
fifteen seventy five, Parrey published his Complete Works of m
Boise Pare, Counselor and Premier Surgeon of the King. This
volume gathered together all of his writings on surgery and
medicine into one and It was edited and revised as needed,
(29:28):
and it was so popular that it had multiple edition
runs over the course of the following century. In sixteen
thirty four it was translated into English for publication in London.
In fifteen eighty five, his last book, Apology and Treatise,
was released, and this became his most famous work. It
was part medical discussion, part autobiography. It covered his medical
(29:48):
career during the fifty years from fifteen thirty five until
its publication. At its heart, it was a drama because
it was a response to criticism from his contemporary Etienne Grandma.
He was dean of the faculty in medicine. Gourmlan's own
writing on surgery had never been as popular as Paris,
and it definitely led to some tension. One Gourmelan wrote
(30:12):
a book about surgical techniques in which he criticized Paris
amputation literatures. Yeah, I think it probably ground his gears
a little bit, that he was a more of a
trained and educated surgeon and yet no one was listening
to him when a barber surgeon had gotten famous written
books and everyone wanted to read them. Apology and Treatise
takes on these criticisms of Gormlan's and outlines the many
(30:36):
ways in which Parrey shifted thinking in the medical community
throughout his career. Basically, he's establishing his street cred and
then he kind of addresses the actual criticism and the
whole thing is also written with the usual careful analysis
and logic that he became famous for, including detailed case
histories that supported his work. And this whole thing was
(30:58):
a huge humiliation for Gormlan. Uh, I'm just like Gormelan
shouldn't have been a jerk. Then he allegedly wrote a
response to it that was written anonymously, and it's kind
of this like week, well, you don't know, kind of
paper that he I can't remember if it was written
(31:18):
anonymously or if he had one of his students published
it under their name. But Gormlan did not really get
over it, but he was shamed. That sadly brings us
to the end of m Bois Parre's life. He died
at home in bed on December at the age of eighty. Yeah.
I I literally had this moment where I was doing
(31:40):
the math on the length of his career and I
was like, wait, he couldn't have been practicing fifty years, Yes,
fifty years um at a time when I I wonder
how many people even had any career for fifty years,
particularly one that changed the way that people practice medicine.
And he undoubtedly, I mean, he saved a lot of
live directly himself, but there's no real way to measure
(32:03):
how many lives were made better or saved because other
doctors were like, I think he's onto something, Bois Paris,
thank you for suggesting being gentle nice. Do you have
some listener mail to take us out? I do. I
have a couple of males about our Sonora Webster Carver.
Episode one is from Stephanie, who writes, hey, gals, I
(32:26):
saw the movie in fifth grade history class and had
no idea what it was called and was starting to
feel like I had dreamed it up. I was enjoying
the podcast like all others, and then you got to
the part where she went blind, and I thought, oh wait,
it's that movie. I then waited excitedly for you to
get to that part. And I'm glad you guys cover
this topic so I don't have to keep wondering about
that vague memory of a film I saw back in
the early nineties. Thank you for the last ten fifteen
(32:48):
years of this podcast. I go back to when it
was the five minute format where it was posed as
a question, which was always funny since the answer was
always in the title. Uh. That's from Stephanie, and she
sent a picture of two kiddies. They are too gorgeous
orange boys named Bunsen and Beaker, and they are super
beautiful and I hope that they, like most orange kitties,
are very snugly. They look at they're definitely very snugly
(33:11):
with each other and thisture so good. Oh, they're so cute.
I want to hug it. I also wanted to read
another Sonora Webster Carver email from our listener Rebecca, who writes,
I discovered your podcast about five years ago when I
was attending grad school for theater in London, and I've
enjoyed every episode since. That sounds like a fabulous story
in and of itself. I want to get that whole
(33:32):
back story. She writes, I was so excited to see
your episode of Sonora Webster Carver in my feed. I'm
from a town right outside of Atlantic City and my
family has been tied to the city for four generations.
My mom's china cabinet is dedicated to pieces her grandparents
stole from some of the hotels they worked in from
the nineteen twenties and thirties, and she was one of
the original show girls at Resorts, which was the first
(33:55):
casino to open. But I am most proud of my
family history with Atlantic City is that my grandmother was
the first female bank teller in the city. I remember
hearing stories from my grandmother about seeing Sonora and the
diving horses when she was a little girl. The idea
of it always freaked me out, but it was great
actually learning about Sonora's life. I was a little girl
(34:15):
when they wanted to bring the diving horses or donkeys back,
and I remember the controversy around it. Atlantic City has
such a fascinating and rich history, and I cannot thank
you enough for this episode. It is always nice to
hear a podcast that connects me to home. Um so fun.
What a fabulous family history, Rebecca. I hope you write
a story about all of this because it sounds great,
(34:35):
and thank you so much for writing in. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can
also find us anywhere on social media as Missed in
History and if you have not yet subscribed, we think
you should. That would be grand. You can do that
on the iHeart Radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever
it is you listen. Stop you Missed in History classes
(34:59):
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Oh, it's
more medical history. So exciting. I've been doing so much
(00:22):
over the pandemic um and we've just had lots of
medical things come up. But this time we're going to
talk about early surgery, and I mean very early surgery.
We're going to talk about Amboise Parrey, who has been
called everything from the gentle surgeon to the father of
modern surgery, and he really really did advance the field
of medicine significantly during his fifty plus years in practice.
(00:43):
And just for a level set, so you get a
sense of how ahead of of other things we've talked
about he is. When we recently talked about Jean Baptiste
Deny in our two parter about the development of blood transfusions,
those events took place more than one hundred years after
what we're talking think about today. And when we talked about,
for example, uh Scottish surgeon Robert Liston, who was famed
(01:06):
for his speedy amputations, that was three hundred years after Parrey.
And so first though to set the stage, we have
to talk a little bit about barber surgeons and some
of the other stuff that was going on in Europe
regarding this trade leading up to the sixteenth century, which
is when Parrey was doing his work, and then we
will get into Amboise Parrey's story. Now, when you sent
(01:28):
me um, when I asked what you were working on
this week and you told me, I googled it and
saw the word surgeon and then saw the year and
kind of went Woa. We've talked about some very early
surgical history before, but it was this was one that
jumped out at me. So yes, I'm glad you picked it. Yea.
So before we get into Paris story, as Holly just said,
(01:50):
we need to have a little overview of barber surgeons
and where they were at when he was working in
this field. We have mentioned barber surgeons before, I don't
think we've really talked about the origins of barber surgeons
and how exactly we got to a point that you
would hire the same person to shave your face as
you would to extract a tooth or amputate a limb,
(02:13):
so wide range of job responsibilities. It seems like such
a strange grouping today, but for a long time I
was totally normal. Yeah, and we know that specialists in
grooming go all the way back to ancient Egypt. But
there's this question of like, when did the cosmetic occupation
take on all of these other duties? So the answer
(02:33):
to that lies in the Hippocratic Oath. We won't read
the whole thing. It is quite long. It includes a
lot of language about holding your teacher in the same
regard as your parents, and administering healthy diets and all
kinds of other things. But the section of it that's
germane to today's topic is this quote, I will not
use the knife, not even on sufferers from Stone, but
(02:54):
will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged
in this work. So we should note two things here
because you also may have heard or read a different
version of the Hippocratic Oath. First, the oath was originally
written in Greek, so obviously there are translations. Second, there
is a modern version that is quite different, and you
may have heard that one. That one, though, was not
(03:15):
written until nineteen sixty four, so long long after m.
Bois Paray's time. It was written by Toughs University academic
dean of the School of Medicine, Louis Lasagna, that phrase,
though about not using the knife on patients, meant that
if somebody did need surgery, there has to be a
different profession who could handle it. Physicians could take care
(03:36):
of their patients in every way that didn't require surgery,
but then if things reached a point where a knife
was involved, then the patient needed to be handed off
to someone else, so a surgeon, or very often a
barber surgeon. So, from their beginnings which had the religious
significance of being in charge of things like tonsuring clergy,
(03:57):
barber's over time adopted additional do ease as standard for
the barber trade. Needs like bleeding or tooth extraction were
handled by barbers for the simple reason that in eleven
sixty three, monks, who up to that point had been
providing services like blood letting, were then forbidden to do
so by a papal decree issued by Pope Alexander the Third.
(04:19):
So at this point Hippocrates has said that physicians can't
do it, and the papal decrease said that, uh, none
of the monks could do anything like this. So additionally,
actual trained surgeons were pretty thin on the ground. Uh
So the role of the barber continued to expand to
include more and more complex procedures until barber surgeon had
(04:40):
emerged as a career. Basically, basically, somebody in Europe's got
to do it, and that's where we landed. In London.
The Worshipful Company of Barbers, which was founded in the
early hundreds and still exists, was a guild for the
barber profession and it supported this exp ending role. But
(05:01):
there were also surgeons who were just surgeons. They had
made their careers specializing in that field. So naturally this
led to some tension. Barber surgeons felt that they were
filling a really vital need for their clientele, and they were,
but surgeons felt that barber surgeons were beneath them and
they didn't have the same skill level because they hadn't
(05:23):
learned Latin or gone to university, and that these combination
shops that handled the tasks of multiple professions should really
just be relegated to the country, where professionals in general
were a lot more sparse. But most surgeons were employed
by royal or high ranking households exclusively, so even in
the city there was still a lot of need for
(05:44):
somebody who could do all of this stuff to compound matters.
A lot of doctors thought that some of the tasks
that a barber surgeon could perform, like blood letting, was
really beneath them. In the nineteen two paper, R. S.
Roberts wrote quote, despite the pretensions of the physicians, it
was impossible to keep medicine, surgery and pharmacy as separate activities,
(06:07):
and a more general form of practice which combined all
that was necessary did develop in London just as quickly
as the provinces. There was so much strife in London
over all of this that Henry the Eighth surgeon Thomas
Lineaker used his influence with the King to ask that
some sort of supervisory guidelines be put in place for surgeons.
(06:28):
Similar requests for medical regulation came from other scholars who
had the King's ear, and for just about the entirety
of Henry the Eighth's reign, there was this sort of
constant effort and struggle to get London on par with
other cities in terms of medical licensing and education. In
fifteen forty, the Company of Barber Surgeons was formed and
that combined the two professions although surgeons and barber surgeons
(06:51):
were still separate things, but under this larger group medical
care was regulated. In France. The two had joined under
one guild eighty years earlier. In three during the reign
of Charles the sixth of France, the king's first barber
and valet was made head of that guild. But then
Paris had its own complexities and conflicts in the medical field.
(07:13):
Barber surgeons were sometimes called doctors of the short robe,
with doctors of the long robe being used to refer
to members of the Confraternity of Saint Come. These were
theoretically surgeons, although they often had sort of a snooty
attitude it seems, about performing surgery themselves. These doctors of
the long robe had a lot of friction with the
(07:35):
university trained physicians and with the barber surgeons. It's made
Paris a very contentious place to practice medicine at all.
It's so soon. All of the posturing that goes on
in the hierarchy of these medical fields is very fascinating
to me. There was reformed to this very problematic system
(07:55):
just before m boise Pere was born. The Faculty de
medicent assigned on a course of action to try to
alleviate the tension by making barber surgeon a legitimate licensed title.
That meant the barber surgeons could attend classes at the
university and they had to take two exams after completing
their training in order to be licensed. As part of
(08:16):
this reformation, the existing surgeons could move up in title
to doctor's region at the faculty. So this ended up
consolidating these three factions into two, and it elevated both
barber surgeons and surgeons. And while this did not by
any means eliminate all of these problems and posturing, it
definitely did improve things and m las Pie was working
(08:39):
in the medical field right in the middle of this
unique and sometimes tense culture. We will talk about his
life and career in just a moment, but first we
will pause for equick sponsor break a. Boise Parrey was
born in fifteen o nine or ten in Burgersson in
(09:02):
western France, and his path in medicine was actually set
fairly early on. Both he and his brother were set
on educational tracks to become surgeons by their father, who
was not in the medical field but did well for
himself as a master carpenter. One of the key pieces
of education that a surgeon needed was Latin, and a
(09:22):
working knowledge of Latin was considered vital for that career,
but and was never quite mastered it. That was even
though he had been sent to a boarding school that
was run by a chaplain who could focus on that language. Yes,
and there was a lot of very dedicated educational effort
to getting him to learn Latin, but that was just
(09:43):
not happening. When he was in his early twenties, Parray
traveled to Paris to pursue a position as an apprentice.
Despite his Latin still lacking, he did get an apprenticeship
with a master barber surgeon, so that at that point
was the only possible path because that Latin requirement was
not quite as vital for a barber surgeon. He didn't
really get a whole lot of time with the surgeon
(10:05):
part of the job, though. He mostly tied it up
in a shop by sweeping hair and he was occasionally
allowed to give beard trims. This was not, we should say,
because his mentor was particularly cruel. The shop just had
to be maintained during business hours, so most apprentices faced
kind of similarly challenging schedules. There just wasn't really a
way to attend medical lectures because of this, unless they
(10:28):
were lectures that were given unusually early in the morning
or late in the evening, so study of the surgery
side of the job was usually done via late night reading,
although there were some procedures like leaching that were taught
their hands on in the shop. I accepted this sometimes
ruling schedule and he applied himself to get to his
(10:49):
goal of being accredited as a barber surgeon. But the
diploma from the Master Barber was really just the first step.
The next phase of his education was pretty similar to
the way a modern medical doctor goes through a residency
training period. For Paris, this meant a surgeon trainee position
at Hotel du de Paris starting in two As an
(11:11):
assigned the Hotel Dieu may one debut its own episode.
It is the oldest operating hospital in the world, It
still operates and it has its roots reaching back at
least eleven hundred years. But for the purposes of m
Boise Pareis story, the key here is that the hotel
had started as a home for the poor of Paris
that eventually added medical care for the residents to its mission.
(11:33):
And it had actually become essentially a teaching hospital by
Parreise time. There was also sort of a weird setup
for surgical training because the hospital was run by the church,
and the church looked upon cutting a human body as anathema.
This meant that any kind of actual surgery that m
bois Parres was able to perform had to be on
(11:54):
deceased patients. The hospital was packed, though it was often
really overcrowded, with patients having to share beds, so he
had plenty to do. Over the course of four years,
he provided care to thousands of residents, including through a
cholera outbreak, and he studied surgery in books and by
doing autopsies. But even though he had done all this
(12:16):
hands on training and work to qualify for a surgical license,
stories go that this lack of Latin continued to hold
him back. He was not able to obtain a license.
But really most accounts indicate that it wasn't so much
the Latin issue. It was that he was too poor
to take the required certification exam. Yeah, the Latin hold
back is like a nice story, but it really seems
(12:39):
more to have been a financial issue. Regardless though, of
which of those factors was the one holding him back.
He ended up on another path, and that was one
that would enable him to practice medicine even if he
did not have a license, and that was as a
member of the French military, Paray was able to get
a position as the surgeon attending the General Martial de
Monjan and the impact this role had on the way
(13:02):
Parreis practiced medicine and consequently a lot of other people.
UH kind of reminds me a little bit of the
episode we did about fame Chef Augusta Scofier, because if
you heard that one and recall it, A Scofier had
learned to improvise really impressive meals for the troops that
he cooked for with minimal supplies during his time in
the military. UH and m Boise Parre in kind of
(13:23):
a similar move improvised treatment of wounds when his medical
supplies ran low. Paia described a key moment and his
military career during the fifteen thirty seven Siege of Turin
when he ran out of the oil that they normally
boiled to cauterize amputation and gunshot wounds. This is the
treatment that he had always felt was often really damaging
(13:44):
and risky to the soldiers, So it is very easy
to the modern ear to immediately hear that whole boiling
oil thing and think, WHOA, what were they thinking? They're
so foolish. Keep in mind, though, this is really still
pretty early in the use of gunpowder artillery in ar Uh.
There are references to artillery on battlefields as early as
the mid fourteenth century, but in the years between then
(14:07):
and when Parrey was deployed, the use of such weapons
had grown pretty slowly. In the Italian wars which Parret
found himself part of as France and Spain battled over
control of Italian territories, were marked by a significant uptick
in the amount and variety of firearms used, and there
was still a commonly held belief that there was poison
(14:28):
in gunpowder, so the oil was thought to somehow counter that.
Parret listed the weapons of war, and his writing as
quote all sorts of minds, countermines, pots of fire, trains,
fiery arrows, lances, crossbows, barrels, balls of fire, and all
(14:49):
such fiery engines and inventions. They are certainly a most
miserable and pernicious kind of invention by which we often
see a thousand unsuspecting men blown up with a mind
by the force of gunpowder. For these modern inventions are
such as easily exceed all the best appointed and cruel engines,
which can be mentioned or thought upon in the shape, cruelty,
(15:12):
and appearance of their operations. Yeah, as many physicians, he
had very strong opinions about firearms, But his improvisation in
this moment and its results changed the way he looked
at medicine forever, and he wrote about it. This is translated. Obviously.
At last my oil ran short, and I was forced
instead thereof to apply a digestive made of the yolks
(15:34):
of eggs, oil of roses, and turpentine. In the night
I could not sleep in quiet, fearing some default in
not cauterizing that I should find the sounded to whom
I had not used the said oil dead from the
poison of their wounds, which made me rise very early
to visit them, where beyond my expectation, I found that
those to whom I had applied my digestive medicament had
(15:56):
but little pain in their wounds, without inflammation or swelling,
having rested fairly well that night. The others to whom
the boiling oil was used, I found feverish, with great
pain and swelling about the edges of their wounds. Then
I resolved never more to burn thus cruelly poor men
with gunshot wounds. So to be clear, this was hugely risky.
(16:19):
If these soldiers had died because of Pare's experimental treatment,
not only would he have felt responsible, he also probably
would have been kicked out of the military. Additionally, it
would have also likely ended any hope he had of
being a barber surgeon beyond the battlefield. So it's really
no surprise that he couldn't sleep. And this discovery that
(16:40):
an alternate approach to treating wounds, one that did not
involve pouring boiling oil on already suffering patients, was successful,
gave Paris a new degree of confidence. He started to
extol the virtues of observing patients and treating based on
assessment of the individual, rather than only going by what
appeared in books as the prescribed method for a particular
(17:02):
type of injury. He had also decided from that moment
that he would only use treatments that he truly believed
to be useful, So in a way, he was making
a conscious decision to trust his instincts because he had
always suspected that scalding oil was not the best idea,
but now he had experiential proof that another approach created
a far better outcome. Up to the time that he
(17:24):
became a military medic, Claret's knowledge about surgery was like
most medical professionals of the time, based on the writings
of Galen. Galen moved medical practice forward in a lot
of ways. He clarified understanding of anatomy, particularly the circulatory
system and the workings of respiration, and he also did
a lot of surgeries. He cared for gladiators and accompanied
(17:47):
Marcus Aurelius into battle to care for the troops, so
he had plenty of injuries to treat and to learn from.
But Galen lived in the first century, so a lot
of his ideas were outdated by the I Parry was working,
even though he was still a really key part of
standard medical education. His writing, for example, was based on
(18:07):
the idea of bodily humors that Hippocrates had developed. Most
of the early sixteenth century medical profession still had an
almost dogmatic devotion to following Galen's writings to the letter,
even though Galen himself wrote about the importance of personal observation.
Paris continued to elevate the care of wounded soldiers as
a field medic and surgeon over the course of several
(18:30):
military tours, and that dedication paid off. Although he was
encouraged to stay in the military because of his usefulness.
In fifteen forty one he returned to Paris and he
was able to take the necessary examinations that he needed,
and he was given the title of Master barber surgeon.
He also got married after he went home to Paris,
and he basically set himself up with a house and
(18:51):
a shop in what is modern day Place de Michel.
Pire went back to the military in fifteen forty two
when he was selected by the Grand Lord of Britain
name to be his surgeon on campaigns. It was during
this phase of military touring that Parre developed a new
technique for dislodging bullets from wounds by having the wounded
person placed their body in the position they had been
(19:13):
in when they were shot, so that he could more
easily track the bullets trajectory. It seems like such a
cool and interesting thing, rather than people digging around in
wounds going how exactly were you standing. I see it
entered here. It probably went here. It seems so obvious,
and yet was not standard at all. And one of
the reasons that we know about m. Bois Pararey's experiences
(19:34):
and his refinement of surgical techniques is because he wrote
numerous books on those subjects. And we're going to talk
about the beginning of his work as an author after
we hear from some of the sponsors that keep stuff
you missed in history class going. After he returned to
(19:55):
Paris again and on the advice of one of the
physicians at the Faculty de Midicant, and started writing about
his work. And this is where not having learned Latin
actually helped make him even more well known. He wrote
in French that was unusual for medical texts, and as
a consequence, it made them accessible to a far wider audience.
(20:17):
Whereas the use of Latin in the medical field had
always been a separator between the well educated and the masses,
Parei's work disregarded that divide, and to some degree it
democratized medical knowledge. Barber surgeons were no longer left out
of the conversation. They were reading the exact same text
as master surgeons. When it came to Parais's work. The
(20:38):
use of French for his writing also meant that translations
of his works went into circulation really quickly. Soon there
were printings of paris writings in English, German and Dutch,
and they spread quickly throughout all of Europe. And because
of this, his ideas created a true watershed moment in
medical history where practitioners started re examining some pretty long
(21:00):
held truths. His first book was published in and it
was titled The Method of Treating Wounds made by arquebuses
and other firearms, darts and such. Also combustion made especially
by cannon powder. So just as quick aside, an arc
bus was a long gun sort of a precursor to
the musket. And the preface to that book really evidences
(21:22):
pires religious devotion. It is dedicated quote to young surgeons
of goodwill, and after a few opening lines about how
he was asked to share his knowledge of treating wounds,
it reads quote, not presuming in my present capacity being
able to teach you, for which more instruction would be necessary,
but to satisfy your desire in part, and also stimulate
(21:44):
some higher spirit by writing in this way, so we
can all give it greater attention. Now I ask you
humbly to take this little book kindly, which, if I
know you are agreeable, will cause me to do something
more such as my small mind can undertake, or such
I pray the creator, brothers and friends to happily support
our work by his grace, always increasing our good affections,
(22:07):
so that something fruitful and useful can come of it.
To the support of the infirmity of human life, and
to the honor of the one in whom are hidden
all the treasures of science, who is the eternal God.
This religious reference is also reflected in a phrase that's
often associated with pie, which is jo la PASSI do
(22:28):
the guree, which is I bandaged him. God cured him
parre with a lot of course study. In his early years,
you'll remember he did a lot of book learning combined
with his situational experience on the battlefield. Wrote about the
various changes to treatments that he had developed while in
military service, and this of course included his opinion that
hot oil lad to pain that could be avoided in
(22:50):
amputation situations, and that the oil could actually damage the
tissue and slow healing. He continually worked to be objective
about reconsidering old methods of doing things as compared to
his new ideas. He never presumed that his way was better,
and he always offered reasoned explanations and situations where he
felt that surgeons should perhaps update their practice to include
(23:11):
new techniques. In all of his writings, the really pervasive
aspect of it is that he speaks of compassion and
kindness and remembering that saving lives is worth the effort.
This isn't necessarily common in medical text at this time,
so it was very unusual, and all of this led
to his nickname in history as the Gentle Surgeon. In
(23:32):
fifteen fifty he published his second book, which was Brief
Collection for the Conduct of Anatomy, and once that was out,
he started editing and updating his first book for release
as a second edition. Right after that second edition project,
he was once again attending to soldiers on the battlefield
with uh. The medics under Vicom de Rohan and Parey
(23:53):
is said to have gone to great efforts to save
a soldier who everyone believed was going to die. They
had actually already dug a grave for him, and that
his dedication to saving even the lowest ranking of the
troops gained him great admiration and loyalty among the men.
During this deployment, Paris started to use ligatures to tie
off vessels during amputations, abandoning the use of hot iron cauterization.
(24:17):
When the city of Myts was overwhelmed by the forces
of Emperor Charles the fifth and Boise, Pari was snuck
past the occupation forces so that he could treat trapped
soldiers there. Because of this and his extraordinary service throughout
his military assignments, King Henry the second of France appointed
him to be one of the King's surgeons. This honor
came with some strings, though, because after the battles in Lochen,
(24:41):
Parrey had returned home to his practice in Paris in
fifteen fifty three, only to have the king ordered him
almost immediately to another battlefield in Ada, where the situation
was quite dire, and Parrey were day and night to
try to treat the overwhelming number of wounded. Things grew
even more precarious when Parey was taken prisoner along with
the rest of the French garrison. He disguised himself at
(25:04):
this point as a low ranking soldier so that his
identity would not be revealed at this point. Remember, his
stuff had started to be translated and spread throughout Europe,
so people knew who he was, and he knew that
like that could potentially endanger him or cause his captors
to ask for a very high ransom. But he did
continue to treat people medically during this time, and he
(25:24):
actually managed to secure his freedom by treating an enemy
officer I believe it was for an ulcer on his leg.
And he returned to King Henry the Second and gave
his report before once again at least attempting to return
to his civilian life. In fifteen fifty four, his career
took another step forward. He was granted the title of
master Surgeon, in part because the surgeons of the city
(25:47):
knew it would make them look good. He became the
surgeon attending King Francis the Second. Yeah, this is actually
pretty pivotal, where somebody who came up as a barber
surgeon suddenly all of the snoop to your levels of
the medical establishment were like no, no, no, you're one
of us, You're famous and stuff. Um. He was sent
(26:10):
on two more military campaigns, at San Quentin and der Lain,
and when Charles the ninth became King of France. Parrey
was once again in that monarch service. As the French
Wars of Religion began. They dominated Parei's professional life just
as other conflicts had, because he was ordered to treat
soldiers at the request of the crown. Although he was
(26:30):
sent away from Paris less and less often, likely because
at this point he was getting a bit older. Parke
continued to write, and in fifteen sixty four he released
a highly illustrated project titled Ten Books of Surgery, with
the magazine of the instruments necessary for it. He also
developed a specialized clamp called a becht de carbat, which
(26:51):
is a crow's beak and that would help hold a
vessel closed to keep patients from bleeding out. This was
using cases where a wound had severn the vessel and
the surgeon could quickly stem the bleeding with the clamp
to improve survival rates. He also invented a number of
other clamps with similarly charming names, the beck de glu
in English as the crane's beak uh and another called
(27:13):
a duck's beak that's a beckt gun. We're both developed
for bullet extraction. These were long and thin, so they
could reach deep into the tissue to get to a
bullet without having to widen the entry wound too much.
That was an ongoing problem. Again, Paris focus on preserving
the tissue and treating the patient as gently as possible
is driving his innovation. Gentle handling of patients and their
(27:37):
tissue was just a really important part of Pare's writing
and work. It was accepted and also expected that patients
would have incredible pain during surgery. If you recall our
episode on Scottish surgeon Robert Liston, which was in the
eighteen hundreds, you may remember that he became famous for
his speed at surgical procedures and was deemed to be
(28:00):
a showboater because of it, But his real goal with
that was to keep the patient's pain as brief as possible. Similarly,
m bois Parare, several centuries before that, was also trying
to be as brief as possible with the scalpel and
to be as gentle as you possibly could in the
hopes of minimizing suffering. Long before it was customary, and
(28:22):
Bois Parret was encouraging the medical profession to embrace the
idea of pain management for patients as well as more
comprehensive follow up care on the part of the surgeon.
So he, like a lot of people, dispensed opium for
postop recovery. Although this wasn't just like a blanket thing
to knock people out. He was trying to really like
carefully determine how much they needed to help them with
(28:44):
their pain. And at a time when surgeons typically kind
of performed a procedure and then left any after care
to physicians and nurses, he believed in remaining part of
the recovery team for the patient after that surgery was completed.
When Charles the Ninth died in fifteen seventy four, Parre
remained the king's surgeon under the new regent that was
Charles's brother, Henry the Third. He was also elevated to
(29:07):
the position of Vale de Chambre Pare served Henry the
Third until the king's assassination in fifteen eighty nine. In
fifteen seventy five, Parrey published his Complete Works of m
Boise Pare, Counselor and Premier Surgeon of the King. This
volume gathered together all of his writings on surgery and
medicine into one and It was edited and revised as needed,
(29:28):
and it was so popular that it had multiple edition
runs over the course of the following century. In sixteen
thirty four it was translated into English for publication in London.
In fifteen eighty five, his last book, Apology and Treatise,
was released, and this became his most famous work. It
was part medical discussion, part autobiography. It covered his medical
(29:48):
career during the fifty years from fifteen thirty five until
its publication. At its heart, it was a drama because
it was a response to criticism from his contemporary Etienne Grandma.
He was dean of the faculty in medicine. Gourmlan's own
writing on surgery had never been as popular as Paris,
and it definitely led to some tension. One Gourmelan wrote
(30:12):
a book about surgical techniques in which he criticized Paris
amputation literatures. Yeah, I think it probably ground his gears
a little bit, that he was a more of a
trained and educated surgeon and yet no one was listening
to him when a barber surgeon had gotten famous written
books and everyone wanted to read them. Apology and Treatise
takes on these criticisms of Gormlan's and outlines the many
(30:36):
ways in which Parrey shifted thinking in the medical community
throughout his career. Basically, he's establishing his street cred and
then he kind of addresses the actual criticism and the
whole thing is also written with the usual careful analysis
and logic that he became famous for, including detailed case
histories that supported his work. And this whole thing was
(30:58):
a huge humiliation for Gormlan. Uh, I'm just like Gormelan
shouldn't have been a jerk. Then he allegedly wrote a
response to it that was written anonymously, and it's kind
of this like week, well, you don't know, kind of
paper that he I can't remember if it was written
(31:18):
anonymously or if he had one of his students published
it under their name. But Gormlan did not really get
over it, but he was shamed. That sadly brings us
to the end of m Bois Parre's life. He died
at home in bed on December at the age of eighty. Yeah.
I I literally had this moment where I was doing
(31:40):
the math on the length of his career and I
was like, wait, he couldn't have been practicing fifty years, Yes,
fifty years um at a time when I I wonder
how many people even had any career for fifty years,
particularly one that changed the way that people practice medicine.
And he undoubtedly, I mean, he saved a lot of
live directly himself, but there's no real way to measure
(32:03):
how many lives were made better or saved because other
doctors were like, I think he's onto something, Bois Paris,
thank you for suggesting being gentle nice. Do you have
some listener mail to take us out? I do. I
have a couple of males about our Sonora Webster Carver.
Episode one is from Stephanie, who writes, hey, gals, I
(32:26):
saw the movie in fifth grade history class and had
no idea what it was called and was starting to
feel like I had dreamed it up. I was enjoying
the podcast like all others, and then you got to
the part where she went blind, and I thought, oh wait,
it's that movie. I then waited excitedly for you to
get to that part. And I'm glad you guys cover
this topic so I don't have to keep wondering about
that vague memory of a film I saw back in
the early nineties. Thank you for the last ten fifteen
(32:48):
years of this podcast. I go back to when it
was the five minute format where it was posed as
a question, which was always funny since the answer was
always in the title. Uh. That's from Stephanie, and she
sent a picture of two kiddies. They are too gorgeous
orange boys named Bunsen and Beaker, and they are super
beautiful and I hope that they, like most orange kitties,
are very snugly. They look at they're definitely very snugly
(33:11):
with each other and thisture so good. Oh, they're so cute.
I want to hug it. I also wanted to read
another Sonora Webster Carver email from our listener Rebecca, who writes,
I discovered your podcast about five years ago when I
was attending grad school for theater in London, and I've
enjoyed every episode since. That sounds like a fabulous story
in and of itself. I want to get that whole
(33:32):
back story. She writes, I was so excited to see
your episode of Sonora Webster Carver in my feed. I'm
from a town right outside of Atlantic City and my
family has been tied to the city for four generations.
My mom's china cabinet is dedicated to pieces her grandparents
stole from some of the hotels they worked in from
the nineteen twenties and thirties, and she was one of
the original show girls at Resorts, which was the first
(33:55):
casino to open. But I am most proud of my
family history with Atlantic City is that my grandmother was
the first female bank teller in the city. I remember
hearing stories from my grandmother about seeing Sonora and the
diving horses when she was a little girl. The idea
of it always freaked me out, but it was great
actually learning about Sonora's life. I was a little girl
(34:15):
when they wanted to bring the diving horses or donkeys back,
and I remember the controversy around it. Atlantic City has
such a fascinating and rich history, and I cannot thank
you enough for this episode. It is always nice to
hear a podcast that connects me to home. Um so fun.
What a fabulous family history, Rebecca. I hope you write
a story about all of this because it sounds great,
(34:35):
and thank you so much for writing in. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can
also find us anywhere on social media as Missed in
History and if you have not yet subscribed, we think
you should. That would be grand. You can do that
on the iHeart Radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever
it is you listen. Stop you Missed in History classes
(34:59):
a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from
I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.