Ambroise Pare and "Des monstres et prodiges" (1573)
Ambroise Pare, 1510-1590
Trained as a barber-surgeon, among the lower ranks of the medical hierarchy in the middle ages and at the beginning of the Renaissance
Physicians
Surgeons
Barbers or Barber-surgeons
Pare’s contributions to the practice of medicine
Wrote about the practice of surgery, revolutionizing practices like the treatment of wounds
Ideas based on direct observation of patients, their suffering, and which treatments were most successful, including on the battlefield
Advanced to surgeon by 1554 and eventually became chief surgeon to two kings of France
Pare’s contributions to the practice of medicine
Wrote about the plague, in favor of sanitation, cremation, local anesthesia, the idea of airborne infections, and the value of silence for the ill; wrote against excessive blood-letting.
Pare’s challenges to the practice of medicine, 2
Dared to write about the practice of medicine, including such things as fevers (considered by university-trained physicians their "turf" and not the purview of the lowly surgeon)
Parallels with Vesalius—but more revolutionary in that Vesalius was a physician who advocated for the learning of anatomy rather than a surgeon who argued that surgery should be integral to medicine
Pare’s challenges to the practice of medicine, 3
Wrote in French rather than in Latin,
Thus giving not only his peers, the surgeons and barber-surgeons, access to his work on surgery, medicine, and extraordinary bodies,
but also
Giving women and young ladies access to texts considered indecent in language and subject matter.
Des monstres et prodiges
English translation: "Of Monsters and Prodigies" or "Of Monsters and Marvels"
Des monstres et prodiges, 2
Considered one of the most significant texts in a tradition of writing about teratology or the scientific study of monsters
Des monstres et prodiges, 3
Significant as a work in which the traditional, sacred view of "monstrous" bodies as portents and wonders combines with a secularized, clinical view of bodily difference
Des monstres et prodiges, 4
Pare represents the cusp between the sacred view and the secular one:
before Pare, tendency to view "infinities of formes" (Montaigne) as signs of
the wonder and variety of the universe
Des monstres et prodiges, 5
Later, tendency to view "wondrous" bodies as anomalous and pathological, exceptions to a "normal" universe
Key elements of Pare’s theories:
Classifications of monstrosities:
monsters of excess (too much)
monsters of default (failure or too little)
monsters of duplicity (doubling, i.e. hermaphrodites)
This same basic scheme was used and expanded by later writers like Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in the 19th century (1800s)
Key elements of Pare’s theories - 2
Emphasis on maternal body and maternal mind
Both emphases would persist
Belief in maternal "impressions" as part of heredity lasted until mid-1800s
Judgements on maternal body arguably part of today’s medicine as well
Key words and phrases
you should know:
teratology – biological study of monsters and marvels (supposedly neutral term)
Anomaly-deviation from the normal
pathology- study of disease
secular – non-religious; pertaining to finite human existence vs. the infinity of the spiritual
taxonomy – science or principles of classification
maternal impressions – belief that the mother’s imagination and sensory experience can have a direct effect on the status of her unborn child
To think about:
How do Pare’s explanations of bodily difference and where it comes from connect with earlier ideas?
Biblical writers on Job’s illness
Classical writers on sex difference (Aristotle), illness (Hippocrates and Galen), and disability (Sophocles on Philoctetes)
Medieval writers on plague (Boccaccio, Jordan of Turre, Ulrich von Hutten)
To think about, 2:
How does Pare connect with other Renaissance medical writers (Paracelsus and Vesalius)?
Can you think of any way to imagine "Des Monstres et Prodiges" as occurring in the same time frame as Renaissance art? How?