so that I might learn something new.  While I was at Bayonne, two things happened worthy of remark by young surgeons.  The first is, I dressed a Spanish gentleman, who had a great and enormous swelling of the throat.  He had lately been touched by the deceased King Charles for the king’s evil.  I opened his swelling. ...  I left him in the hands of a surgeon of the town, to finish his cure.  M. de Fontaine, Knight of the Order of the King, had a severe continued pestilent fever, accompanied with many inflammatory swellings in sundry parts of the body.  He had bleeding at the nose for two days, without ceasing, nor could we staunch it:  and after this haemorrhage the fever ceased, with much sweating, and by and bye the swellings suppurated, and he was dressed by me, and healed by the grace of God.

BATTLE OF SAINT DENIS, 1567

As for the battle of Saint Denis, there were many killed on both sides.  Our wounded withdrew to Paris to be dressed, with the prisoners they had taken, and I dressed many of them.  The King ordered me, at the request of Mme. the Constable’s Lady, to go to her house to dress the Constable; who had a pistol-shot in the middle of the spine of his back, whereby at once he lost all feeling and movement in his thighs and legs ... because the spinal cord, whence arise the nerves to give feeling and movement to the parts below, was crushed, broken, and torn by the force of the bullet.  Also he lost understanding and reason, and in a few days he died.  The surgeons of Paris were hard put to it for many days to treat all the wounded.  I think, mon petit maistre, you saw some of them.  I beseech the great God of victories, that we be never more employed in such misfortune and disaster.

VOYAGE OF THE BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR. 1569

During the battle of Moncontour, King Charles was at Plessis-les-Tours, where he heard the news of the victory.  A great number of gentlemen and soldiers retreated into the town and suburbs of Tours, wounded, to be dressed and treated; and the King and the Queen-mother bade me do my duty by them, with other surgeons who were then on duty, as Pigray, du Bois, Portail, and one Siret, a surgeon of Tours, a man well versed in surgery, who was at this time surgeon to the King’s brother.  And for the multitude of bad cases we had scarce any rest, nor the physicians either.

M. le Comte de Mansfeld, Governor of the Duchy of Luxembourg, Knight of the Order of the King, was severely wounded in the battle, in the left arm, with a pistol-shot which broke a great part of his elbow; and he withdrew to Borgueil near Tours.  Then he sent a gentleman to the King, to beg him to send one of his surgeons, to help him of his wound.  So they debated which surgeon they should send.  M. le Marechal de Montmorency told the King and the Queen that they ought to send him their chief surgeon; and urged that M. de Mansfeld had done much toward the victory.