The French military surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510-1590) restored and reformed the surgical art through his practice, writings, and personal leadership to earn the sobriquet "father of modern surgery."

Ambroise Paré was born in Bourg-Hersent (now absorbed into Laval). His father seems to have been barber-surgeon to the Comte de Laval. His elder brother and his brother-in-law were also barber-surgeons, under whom he may have served his apprenticeship. From 1532 to 1537 Paré served under the surgeons of the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris as a clinical assistant studying anatomy and surgery. This experience, unusual for the times, Paré acknowledged was of the greatest importance to his future career.

Unable to pay for licensure, Paré joined his patron, René de Montejan, a colonel general of infantry, as military surgeon in the French expedition of 1537 to Turin. In his first campaign he realized that, on the...