Soldiers often died of infected wounds; stabs and gunshot wounds were especially difficult to treat because often they were punctures deep into the flesh. When Ambroise Pare first began working as a field surgeon, the common treatment for a gunshot wound was to pour boiling oil into the hole and cauterize it. Having run out of the proper oil on one occasion, Pare accidentally discovered a better, more humane dressing for this type of wound: “At last I wanted oil and was constrained instead thereof to apply a digestive of yolks of eggs, oil of roses, and turpentine... [The next morning] I found those to whom I had applied my digestive medicine, to feel little pain, and their wounds without inflammation or tumor. . . The others, to whom was used the said burning oil, i found feverish, with great pain and tumor about the edges of their wounds. And then I resolved with myself never so cruelly to burn poor men wounded with gunshot” (Ross and McLaughlin 1968, p. 561). Later in his career Pare bribed an Italian surgeon to reveal the secret of an amazingly successful field dressing; it consisted of turpentine, oil of lilies, and crushed earthworms boiled up with newborn puppies. Although such procedures may seem barbaric in today’s world of modern medicine, we must realize that gunshot wounds were relatively new problems in battlefield medicine. Gangrene was the result of badly infected wounds, and amputation was usually the only remedy.
World History
