ABSTRACT
Every time an orthopaedic surgeon deals with a traumatised limb, he should utter a silent prayer to a sixteenth-century French surgeon, a particular hero of mine, Ambroise Pare. Pare was appointed surgeon to the Duke of Montejan, who was Colonel-General of the French infantry. This, his first of many campaigns, took him to Turin, and it was in 1537 that he made the fundamental observations he described so brilliantly in his magnificent book, The Apologie and Treatise. Pare went from fame to fame and dominated the history of surgery in the sixteenth century. He was surgeon to no fewer than four kings of France, but his practice continued to embrace the humblest soldier as well. In his very first campaign he ended his description of the treatment of a gunshot wound of the ankle with his most famous phrase, ‘I dressed the wound and God healed him’.
