Medieval

Question 1

Paré (1510-1590)

Answer 1

He worked as an army surgeon for 20 years so experimented a lot with wounded soldiers. Hot oil was used to seal wounds but Paré came up with the mixture of egg yolk, turpentine and rose oil which did the same job as hot oil but was much less painful for the soldiers. He also used the method of ligatures instead of cauterisation to prevent bleeding after amputation: this involved tying off the blood vessels which had a higher success rate to cauterisation and was much less painful. He spread his ideas through his book ‘Les Oeuvres’ in 1575 and his ideas became famous among British doctors and surgeons. The impact of this is that, although the impact on medicine was limited due to new ideas being met with scepticism by the public and only the rich being able to afford knowledgable trained doctors, the trained doctors accepted his ideas