in the English camp was, as might readily be expected, very heavy. The same state of things existed, at a somewhat later date, in the fleet sent against the Spanish Armada. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that very few of the educated surgeons were willing to accept service in the English army or the English fleet, especially as the pay which they received was no greater than that of the drummers and trumpeters. Toward the end of the century much greater attention was paid to the care of the wounded and crippled, and, in corroboration of this, it may be stated that Henry the Fourth, King of France,—who, it may safely be assumed, was influenced to take this step by the enlightened advice of Ambroise Paré,—ordered the establishment of military hospitals for the use of the army which was at that time besieging Amiens. And again, at a later date (1603), there was established at Paris a retreat for old and infirm or mutilated officers and soldiers.
It is an interesting fact that during the year 1544, while Henry the Eighth of England, in alliance with the German Emperor Charles the Fifth, was carrying on the war against Francis the First, King of France, there were present, on the soil of the latter country, all the leading European surgeons of that period—viz., Ambroise Paré, with the French army which was laying siege to Boulogne-sur-Mer (captured a few months earlier by the English troops); Thomas Gale, the most famous surgeon of that day in England, with the army of the besieged; and Vesalius and Daza Chacon with the troops of Charles the Fifth at Landrecy (near the Belgian boundary, south of Brussels) and at St. Didier (in the northeastern part of France). I have already, in preceding chapters, given brief accounts of the lives and professional accomplishments of all these surgeons with the exception of Gale, and it only remains now to supply such information as may be obtainable concerning the latter and also concerning his contemporaries, the English surgeons Clowes and Woodall.
Thomas Gale.—Thomas Gale was born in London in 1507, practiced medicine for some years in that city, and then, in the capacity of a surgeon, entered the service of the army
