to be sold until they should have received the official sanction of the Faculty. One of Paré's chief offenses, as it appears, was that of not writing his treatises in Latin, and among the twenty-nine specifications of his short-*comings was that of plagiarism. (See remarks on this subject further on.)
In his efforts to extend his knowledge of the science of medicine, and in particular to learn what the ancients had written on the subject, Paré soon discovered that many obstacles stood in his way. He did not allow himself, however, to be discouraged by this fact, but set to work, without delay and in his usual resolute fashion, to remove them. He found, in the first place, that all the available treatises of the ancient medical authors were written in Latin, a language of which he possessed scarcely any knowledge. So he was obliged to hire men to translate for his own use large portions of these books. Then, at a later date, after he had begun to accumulate notes for the treatises in which he proposed to publish his own experiences and his own views about the surgical topics in which he was interested, he saw clearly that suitable pictorial illustrations would add materially to the value of the written text, and he therefore did not hesitate to spend a considerable sum of money—Malgaigne says three thousand livres—in having the needed drawings made. Paré was also in no small degree a public benefactor, for he purchased the formulae of some of the more valuable of the remedies employed by the leading charlatans, in order that he might print them and so place them within the reach of everybody.
Paré gives the following picturesque account of his first experiences as an army surgeon in actual warfare:—
In 1536, he says, I accompanied the large army sent to Turin
by Francis the First, King of France, to retake certain castles and
fortifications which were held at that time by the troops of the
Emperor Charles the Fifth. My official position was that of
surgeon to the foot soldiers; and when our men took possession of
Susa, after the enemy had been defeated, I was among the first
to enter the city. Our horses rode rough-shod over the dead bodies
lying on the roadway, and over the bodies of many who were simply
