ABSTRACT
Jean-Louis Petit was the outstanding surgeon in Paris in the first half of the 18th century. Pierre-Joseph Desault was the most influential surgeon and educator in France during the second half of the century, although his career was destroyed and his death was hastened by the political disturbances of the French Revolution. Antonio Scarpa’s talents were many; he was a brilliant anatomist, a surgeon with especial talents in ophthalmology and orthopaedics, an outstanding teacher and an excellent artist who illustrated his own numerous texts. Germany had lagged behind the other Western European countries in surgery; itinerant bone-setters, stone-cutters and charlatans vied with barber-surgeons for the practice of the art. Surgery in America began to develop towards the end of the 18th century. The life of one surgeon can be used to illustrate the heights achieved in the early 19th century.
