Η τραυματολογία στα έργα του θεμελιωτή της χειρουργικής Αμβροσίου Παρέ (1509-1590)

Abstract

The figure of Ambroise Paré is one that best illustrates the great surgeons of the Renaissance. He was named as the father of modern surgery and was the great official royal surgeon for kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III and is also considered as one of the fathers modern forensic pathology. He was a leader in surgical techniques and battlefield medicine, especially the treatment of wounds. He was also an anatomist and invented several surgical instruments.His motto was: "Labor omnia vincit improbus" ("Hard work conquers all").Paré introduced the ligature of arteries instead of cauterization during amputation. 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 Corbin" ("crow's beak"), a predecessor to modern haemostats. Although ligatures often spread infection, it was still an important breakthrough in surgical practice. 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 pains occur in the brain (the consensus of the medical community today) and not in remnants of the limb.It was his intuition and charisma that forced a young barber-surgeon at the age of 27 to challenge, centuries of brutal and ineffective therapy. He treated amputations, trephining, dislocations (while he practices the first elbow disarticulation), various wounds and he is earning a reputation as a virtuoso, surprising his colleagues and improving his skills by the multiplicity of cases treated.Although an autodidact, he passed the surgical status of manual discipline, scorned by doctors and practiced by barbers, to that of a respectable profession, but his zeal to expose charlatans earned him the hostility of all doctors of the Faculty that were encased in medical traditions. He was also an inventive technician, and became a pioneer in wound treating and healing, fracture and dislocation reductions together with the use of casting and splinting. His adventurous life and scientific progress will always enlighten young and ambitious minds in medicine.