Ambroise Paré (; – 20 December 1590) was a French
barber surgeon who served in that role for kings
Henry II,
Francis II,
Charles IX and
Henry III. He is considered one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology and a pioneer in surgical techniques and
battlefield medicine
Battlefield medicine, also called field surgery and later combat casualty care, is the treatment of wounded combatants and non-combatants in or near an area of combat. Medicine, Civilian medicine has been greatly advanced by procedures that were ...
, especially in the treatment of wounds. He was also an
anatomist
Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...
, invented several surgical instruments, and was a member of the Parisian barber surgeon guild.
In his personal notes about the care he delivered to Captain Rat, in the Piémont campaign (1537–1538), Paré wrote: ''Je le pansai, Dieu le guérit'' ("I bandaged him and God healed him"). This epitomises a philosophy that he used throughout his career. These words, inscribed on his statue in
Laval, are reminiscent of the Latin adage ''
medicus curat, natura sanat'', "The physician cures, nature heals".
Early life
Paré was born in 1510 in Bourg-Hersent, later incorporated into
Laval, then part of
the province
''The Province'' is a daily newspaper published in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format in British Columbia by Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network, alongside the ''Vancouver Sun'' broadsheet newspaper. Together, they ...
of
Maine
Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
, in northwestern France. As a child he watched, and was first apprenticed to, his older brother, a barber-surgeon in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
. He was also a pupil at
Hôtel-Dieu, France's oldest hospital.
Medicine
Paré was a keen observer and did not allow the beliefs of the day to supersede the evidence at hand. In his autobiographical book, ''Journeys in Diverse Places'', Paré inadvertently practised the scientific method when he returned the following morning to a battlefield. He compared one group of patients who were treated in the traditional manner with boiling
elder oil and cauterization, and the remainder with a recipe made of egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine, and left overnight. Paré discovered that the soldiers treated with the boiling oil were in agony, whereas the ones treated with the
ointment
A topical medication is a medication that is applied to a particular place on or in the body. Most often topical medication means application to body surfaces such as the skin or mucous membranes to treat ailments via a large range of classes ...
had recovered because of the antiseptic properties of
turpentine
Turpentine (which is also called spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, terebenthine, terebenthene, terebinthine and, colloquially, turps) is a fluid obtainable by the distillation of resin harvested from living trees, mainly pines. Principall ...
. This proved this method's efficacy, and he avoided cauterization thereafter. However, treatments such as this were not widely used until many years later. He published his first book ''The method of curing wounds caused by arquebus and firearms'' in 1545.
Paré also reintroduced the
ligature of
arteries
An artery () is a blood vessel in humans and most other animals that takes oxygenated blood away from the heart in the systemic circulation to one or more parts of the body. Exceptions that carry deoxygenated blood are the pulmonary arteries in ...
(first used by
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
and later described by
Al-Zahrawi
Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-'Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari (; c. 936–1013), popularly known as al-Zahrawi (), Latinisation of names, Latinised as Albucasis or Abulcasis (from Arabic ''Abū al-Qāsim''), was an Arabs, Arab physician, su ...
) instead of
cauterization
Cauterization (or cauterisation, or cautery) is a medical practice or technique of burning a part of a body to remove or close off a part of it. It destroys some tissue in an attempt to mitigate bleeding and damage, remove an undesired growth, o ...
during
amputation
Amputation is the removal of a Limb (anatomy), limb or other body part by Physical trauma, trauma, medical illness, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as cancer, malign ...
. The usual method of sealing wounds by searing with a red-hot iron often failed to arrest the bleeding and caused patients to die of shock. For the ligature technique he designed the "''Bec de Corbeau''" ("crow's beak"), a predecessor to modern
haemostats. Although ligatures often spread infection, it was still an important breakthrough in surgical practice. Paré detailed the technique of using ligatures to prevent hemorrhaging during amputation in his 1564 book ''Treatise on Surgery''. During his work with injured soldiers, Paré documented the pain experienced by amputees which they perceive as sensation in the 'phantom' amputated limb. Paré believed that
phantom pain
Phantom pain is a Pain, painful perception that an individual experiences relating to a Limb (anatomy), limb or an Organ (biology), organ that is not physically part of the body, either because it was amputation, removed or was never there in the ...
s occur in the brain (the consensus of the medical community today) and not in remnants of the limb. He also performed many neurosurgical procedures.

In 1542, during the
siege of Perpignan, Paré, accompanying the French army, employed a novel technique to aid in bullet extraction. During a battle,
Maréchal de Brissac was wounded, having been shot in the shoulder. When finding the bullet seemed impossible, Paré had the idea to ask the victim to put himself in the exact position he was in when shot. The bullet was then found and removed by Henry's personal surgeon, Nicole Lavernault.
Paré was also an important figure in the progress of
obstetrics
Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a su ...
in the middle of the 16th century. He revived the practice of
podalic version, and showed how even in cases of head presentation, surgeons with this operation could often deliver the infant safely, instead of having to dismember the infant and extract the infant piece by piece. During his time at the
Hôtel-Dieu, Paré directly influenced the education of future royal midwife
Louise Boursier.
Paré also introduced the lancing of infants' gums using a
lancet during
teething
Teething is the process by which an infant's first teeth (the deciduous teeth, often called "baby teeth" or "milk teeth") appear by emerging through the gums, typically arriving in pairs. The mandibular central incisors are the first primary te ...
, in the belief that teeth were failing to emerge from the gums due to lack of a pathway, and that this failure was a cause of death. This belief and practice persisted for centuries, with some exceptions, until towards the end of the nineteenth century lancing became increasingly controversial and was then abandoned.
Paré was ably seconded by his pupil
Jacques Guillemeau, who translated his work into
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, and at a later period himself wrote a treatise on
midwifery
Midwifery is the health science and health profession that deals with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period (including care of the newborn), in addition to the sexual and reproductive health of women throughout their lives. In many cou ...
. An English translation of it was published in 1612 with the title ''Childbirth; or, The Happy Delivery of Women''.
In 1552, Paré was accepted into royal service of the
Valois Dynasty under
Henry II; he was however unable to cure the king's fatal blow to the head, which he received during a tournament in 1559. Paré stayed in the service of the kings of France to the end of his life in 1590, ultimately serving Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III.
According to Henri IV's chief minister
Sully, Paré was a
Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...
and on 24 August 1572, the day of the
St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, Paré's life was saved when King Charles IX locked him in a clothes closet. He died in Paris on 20 December 1590 from natural causes in his 80th year, and is buried at the church of Saint André-des-Arts. While there is evidence that Paré was sympathetic to the Huguenot cause, he seems to have kept up the appearance of being Catholic to avoid danger: he was twice married, had his children baptized, and was buried according to the Catholic faith.
A collection of Paré's works (he published these separately throughout his life, based on his experiences treating soldiers on the battlefield) was published at Paris in 1575. They were frequently reprinted, several editions appeared in German and Dutch, and among the English translations was that of
Thomas Johnson (1634).
Bezoar stone experiment
In 1567, Ambroise Paré described an experiment to test the properties of
bezoar stones. At the time, the stones were commonly believed to be able to cure the effects of any poison, but Paré believed this to be impossible. It happened that a cook at Paré's court was caught stealing fine silver cutlery, and was condemned to be hanged. The cook agreed to be poisoned instead, on the condition that he would be given a bezoar straight after the poison and go free in case he survived. The stone did not cure him, and he died in agony seven hours after being poisoned. Thus Paré had proved that bezoars could not cure all poisons.
Forensics

Paré's writings further include the results of his methodical studies on the effects of violent death on internal organs.
He also created and wrote, ''Reports in Court'',
a procedure on the writing of legal reports in relation to medicine.
His writings and instructions are known as the beginning of modern forensic pathology.
Prostheses
Paré contributed both to the practice of surgical amputation and the design of limb
prostheses. He also invented some ocular prostheses,
[Snyder, Charles (1963) "Ambroise Pare and Ocular Prosthesis" ''Archives of Ophthalmology'' 70(1): pp. 130–132] making artificial eyes from enameled gold, silver,
porcelain
Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...
and glass.
Honours
Asteroid
259344 Paré, discovered by French amateur astronomer
Bernard Christophe in 2003, was named in his memory.
The official was published by the
Minor Planet Center
The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Funct ...
on 14 February 2014 ().
See also
*
Louis Duret
*
Clinique Ambroise Paré
*
Cagot
References
External links
*
Statue of Ambroise Paré, Place du Jet d'eau in Laval, FrancePage through a virtual copy of Paré's ''Oeuvres''* . Bezoar stone story on pages 186–7. Paré not a huguenot on page 84
Famous Surgeons in History''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pare, Ambroise
1510s births
1590 deaths
People from Maine (province)
French surgeons
16th-century French physicians
French medical writers
French military doctors
16th-century surgeons
French male non-fiction writers
16th-century French writers
16th-century French male writers