surgery; and his success in this field was to be ascribed to his profound knowledge of anatomy, to his inventive genius, and to his great technical skill. He insisted very strongly upon the importance, for the surgeon, of possessing good instruments and well-constructed apparatus.
If we compare Fabricius of Hilden with Ambroise Paré we are obliged to admit that the latter, although decidedly inferior to his rival in scientific training, was the greater surgeon of the two. It is perhaps worth recording that Paracelsus and Wuertz were Fabricius' bitter opponents.
Of his published contributions to surgical literature, the most important are to be found in the work entitled: "Observationum et curationum chirurgicarum centuriae VII.," published at Lyons in 1641.
Felix Wuertz.—Felix Wuertz was born at Zurich, Switzerland, between the years 1500 and 1510 (the exact date is not known). As to his early life and surroundings I am only able to say that his father was a painter, that he himself took service under a barber, and that at the end of two or three years, after he had learned the details of this branch of work, he started out on his travels over Europe in the character of a barber's apprentice, as was, in those days, the regular custom with apprentices of all trades or occupations. In this way he visited such cities as Bamberg, Pforzheim, Nuernberg, Padua and Rome, in each of which he spent a certain length of time as an aid to those surgeons who were willing to employ him. It is not unlikely that it was during this wandering period of his life that he gained some experience in the treatment of gunshot wounds. In 1536, after an absence of four or five years, he returned to his native city and was regularly enrolled as a member of the barbers' guild. During the following twenty years he carried on the practice of medicine and surgery, but more particularly the latter, with ever-increasing success. In 1559, for reasons which are not mentioned by any of his biographers, he left Zurich and established himself in Strassburg; and then, at the end of another ten or twelve years, he again changed his residence, this time giving the preference to Basel, a Swiss city located at the boundary
