Five-minute digest

Journeys in Diverse Places

Ambroise Paré

Summary

Journeys in Diverse Places is the war memoir of the French surgeon Ambroise Paré. He wrote it late in life as part of his Apology and Treatise, a reply to a physician who had attacked his methods, and he answered by describing what he had seen and done on campaign from 1537 to 1569. Stephen Paget translated it into English in 1897. The first journey, to Turin in 1537, contains the most famous story in the history of surgery. Young and inexperienced, Paré followed the accepted rule that gunshot wounds were poisoned and must be scalded with boiling oil. When his oil ran out, he dressed the remaining wounds with a mild mixture of egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine, and lay awake fearing those soldiers would die. In the morning he found them resting comfortably, while the men treated with boiling oil were feverish and in pain. He resolved never again to burn the wounded so cruelly. Later journeys follow the French armies through Brittany, Perpignan, Germany, the siege of Metz in 1552, where the defenders cheered his arrival, and the fall of Hesdin in 1553, where he was captured and won his release by healing an ulcer that troubled the officer who held him. He describes treating princes and common soldiers, removing arrows and bullets, setting fractures, trepanning skulls, and tying off blood vessels during amputations instead of searing them with hot irons. He records failures as well as successes, the horrors of siege and plague, and his kindness to patients of every rank. Again and again he closes an account of a cure with the modest refrain that he dressed the wound and God healed it. The book gives a vivid picture of sixteenth-century warfare and medicine, and of a practical, curious and devout surgeon who trusted experience over tradition.

Top Lessons

Learning from accident
Paré's great discovery came from a shortage of supplies, but he noticed what happened and changed his practice. Openness to evidence turned an accident into progress.
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Humility in healing
Paré's refrain, that he dressed the patient and God healed him, expresses humility about the limits of human skill and gratitude for recovery.
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Compassion in war
Paré cares for enemies and friends, princes and common soldiers. His memoir shows mercy practised in the middle of cruelty.
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For the Christian reader
Paré's faith is woven into his practice: he prays, gives thanks and sees healing as God's work through human hands. His life illustrates the Christian conviction that ordinary work done well and with mercy is a form of service to God.
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Verified Quotes

“I dressed him, and God healed him.”

— Ambroise Paré, Journeys in Diverse Places, The Journey to Turin. 1537 (and elsewhere), trans. Stephen Paget (1897).Quote card

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Leaves of Grass, Drum-Taps
The Civil War poems move through camps, hospitals, wounds, deathbeds and nursing care.
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Ain't I a Woman?, The speech
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“I did him the office of physician, apothecary, surgeon, and cook.”

— Ambroise Paré, Journeys in Diverse Places, The Journey to Germany. 1552, trans. Stephen Paget (1897).Quote card

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Medical Lens

A first-hand account of Renaissance military surgery, including the abandonment of boiling oil for gunshot wounds and the use of ligatures in amputation.

Surgery WAR Wounds Physicians Doctors Pain

The Journey to Turin. 1537
The boiling-oil discovery.
The Journey to Danvilliers. 1552
Amputation with ligatures instead of cautery.

Journeys in Diverse Places

Summary

Top Lessons

Learning from accident

Humility in healing

Compassion in war

For the Christian reader

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens