ABSTRACT
Natural comparisons were the basis of Paracelsus’ surgery. Surgery had a low reputation during the first decades of the sixteenth century. Paracelsus helped it little by championing its equal status with internal medicine. The man who was to renew and reform surgery came from the barber-surgeons’ ranks. A man of boundless curiosity, Paracelsus must have learned more practical medicine from his many conversations with doctors, nurses, pharmacists, monks, bathers and alchemists, than could be got at most universities. From a medical standpoint, Leonardo da Vinci was the most significant of Renaissance artists. A herald of developments in surgery was the Florentine doctor Antonio Benivieni. The internists gained strength by forming an association which eventually became the Royal College of Physicians. Scultetus presented many illustrations of the accepted techniques for various kinds of operation and bandaging.
