Ambroise Pare

Ambroise Pare was a French barber surgeon of the Renaissance who served four successive French kings and is regarded as one of the fathers of modern surgery and of forensic pathology. Rejecting the standard practice of cauterizing gunshot wounds with boiling oil, which he found worsened outcomes, he developed a milder ointment of egg yolk, rose oil and turpentine, and he reintroduced tying off arteries with ligatures during amputation in place of cauterization, reducing fatal blood loss. He also revived podalic version for safer breech deliveries, designed early prosthetic limbs and artificial eyes, and conducted methodical studies of violent death that are counted among the origins of forensic medicine.