happens in our own time. . . . How much do you suppose I care whether Galen's, or Avicenna's, or Guy de Chauliac's opinion does or does not agree with mine? Every such opinion—it should be remembered—was, at one time or another in their day, a new [and therefore unproved] opinion. . . . In practical surgery much more importance attaches to the manner in which one carries out one's manipulations, and to the amount of experience which one may have acquired, than to the length of time which one devotes to windy consultations.
Fortune conferred very few favors upon Wuertz in the
course of his career; the aid granted by kings and princes
played no part in the moulding of his character; his greatness
was entirely due to his own unaided efforts. Paré,
on the other hand, was certainly one of Fortune's favorites.
He, too, like Franco and Wuertz, began his professional life
as a barber's apprentice, but, as he was made of a much
finer clay, the ultimate product of his development was a
princely surgeon, perhaps no more efficient or skilful than
his two distinguished contemporaries, but unquestionably
more many-sided, more lovable than either of them. On
the other hand, Wuertz rendered a most valuable service
to the science of surgery by his close and patient study of
certain symptoms which his confrères had overlooked or
incorrectly interpreted (such, for example, as pyaemia,
hospital gangrene and septicaemia); and he thus established
the fact that these were in reality independent
diseases.
