Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/569

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(i.e., in 1563), should have made no mention of that author's method of applying ligatures to the bleeding vessels of an amputation stump. The first reference (in English) to this plan of preventing hemorrhage from the divided blood-*vessels in an amputation stump occurs—so far as I have been able to discover—in the treatise published in London by William Clowes, in 1588, under the title "A prooved practise for all young chirurgians etc." Clowes, however, erroneously gives the credit for this important procedure to Guillemeau, one of Paré's pupils.

In one of his writings Gale states, after witnessing the surgical practice at the Royal hospitals of St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas in 1562, "that it was saide that Carpinters, women, weuvers, coblers and tinkers did cure more people than the chirurgians." (South.)

William Clowes.—William Clowes was born, about the year 1540, at Kingsbury, in Warwickshire, and received his early training in surgery under George Keble of London. In 1563 he accepted the position of surgeon in the army which was under the command of Earl Ambrose of Warwick and was stationed at that time in France. Six years later he settled in London, and was made a member of the Barber-Surgeons' Company. In 1575 he received an appointment on the Surgical Staff of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and six years later still he was promoted to the rank of full surgeon, a position which he already held in Christ's Hospital. In 1585 he resigned his appointment at St. Bartholomew's and accepted an invitation to serve in the Earl of Leicester's army, which was at that time in the Netherlands. During this war Clowes acquired a rich and varied experience in the treatment of wounds. Soon after his return to London in 1588 he joined the fleet which vanquished the Spanish Armada. Later, he was given the appointment of Surgeon to the Queen. His death took place at Plaistow, County of Essex, in August, 1604. Von Gurlt does not hesitate to qualify him as one of the most distinguished English surgeons of his day.

Of the four surgical treatises which were written by Clowes, and of which several editions were published