WOBO: Search for words and phrases in the texts here...

, a French surgeon, was born at Paris in 1654, and after studying medicine and surgery, became surgeon-major to the French army in Italy, and afterwards first surgeon to the duchess dowager of Savoy. His practice was extensive and successful, and he had also cultivated polite literature with considerable enthusiasm. He is now, however, principally known by a work, which was long very popular, under the title of“Le Chirurgien de l'hospital,” Paris, 1695, 1705, and translated into English and most of the continental languages. There were five editions at least of the Dutch translation. In 1725 the author published a second volume at Paris, in which he advances many facts and experiments relative to the effects of mercury, of which Bianchi, professor of anatomy at Turin, availed himself in his Latin dissertation on the use of that mineral, and is said to have claimed discoveries which were really made by Belloste. The latter, however, appears to have been somewhat of a quack, as we are told that he bequeathed to his son the secret of compounding those mercurial pills, of which he speaks so often in his “Hospital Surgeon.”

, a French surgeon, or physician, of the seventeenth century, by uniting the quack and the regular, acquired a considerable degree of reputation, and belongs to a class, we fear, pretty numerous in other countries as well as France. He began his career as a trussmaker, and then placed himself at the head of an academy of his own creation for medical discoveries, the memoirs of which were published monthly, and we presume there must have been some papers of consequence among them, as the celebrated Bonnet translated those of the first three years into Latin, and published them under the title of “Zodiacus Medico-Gallicus,” 1680, 4to. The liberties, however, which Blegny took with the characters of some physicians of reputation occasioned the suppression of these memoirs in 1682, yet he continued to write, and sent his papers to one Ganthier, a physician of Niort, who published them at Amsterdam in 1684, under the title of the “Mercure savant.” In the mean time Blegny endeavoured to make himself famous, and that nothing might be wanting to shew his variety of talents he added to surgery and pharmacy a course of lectures on wig-making. For some time he appears to have imposed on the court itself, as we find that in 1678 he was appointed surgeon in ordinary to the queen; in 1633 surgeon in ordinary to the duke of Orleans; and in 1687, physician in ordinary to the king: but in 1693, his real character becoming more apparent, he was stripped of these honours for having attempted to establish an order of knighthood, and sent to prison at the castle of Angers, where he was confined for eight years. After his release, he retired to Avignon, where he died in 1722, aged about seventy. He published various works, now in little estimation.

In the latter end of the same year, he was seized with a paralytic stroke, from which in appearance he soon perfectly recovered. The flattering prospect, however, of his continuanc6 in life, soon vanished; for, on the 1 Oth of April, 1752, he was suddenly carried off by a fit of an apoplexy, at Bath, in the sixty -fourth year of his age. He married Deborah Knight, a citizen’s daughter, and, if we mistake not, sister of the famous Robert Knight, cashier to the South-sea company in 1720. By this lady Mr. Cheselden had only one daughter, Wilhelmina Deborah, who was married to Charles Cotes, M. D. of Woodcote, in Shropshire, and member of parliament for Tamworth, in Staffordshire. Dr. Cotes died without issue, on the 2 1st of March, 1748; and Mrs. Cotes, who survived him, died some years since at Greenhithe, in the parish of Swanscombe, in the county of Kent. Mrs. Cheselden died in 1764. Mr. Cheselden’s reputation was great in anatomy, but we apprehend that it was still greater, and more justly founded, in surgery. The eminent surgeon Mr. Sharp, in a dedication to our author, celebrates him as the ornament of his profession; acknowledges his own skill in surgery to have been chiefly derived from him; and represents, that posterity will be ever indebted for the signal services he has done to this branch of the medical art. In surgery he was undoubtedly a great improver, having introduced simplicity into the practice of it, and laid aside the operose and hurtful French instruments which had been formerly in use. Guided by consummate skill, perfectly master of his hand, fruitful in resources, he was prepared for all events, and performed every operation with remarkable dexterity and coolness. Being fully competent to each possible case, he was successful in all. He was at the same time eminently distinguished by his tenderness to his patients. Whenever he entered the hospital on his morning visits, the reflection of what he was unavoidably to perform, impressed him with uneasy sensations; and it is even said that he was generally sick with anxiety before he began an operation, though during the performance of it he was, as hath already been observed, remarkably cool and self-collected. Our author’s eulogist relates a striking contrast between him and a French surgeon of eminence. The latter gentleman, having had his feelings rendered callous by a course of surgical practice, was astonished at the sensibility shewn by Mr. Cheselden previously to his operations, and considered it as a great mark of weakness in his behaviour. Yet the same gentleman, being persuaded to accompany Mr. Cheselden to the fencing-school, who frequently amused himself with it as a spectator, could not bear the sight, and was taken ill. The adventure was the subject of conversation at court, and both were equally praised for goodness of heart; but the principle of humanity appears to have been stronger in Mr. Cheselden, because the feeling of it was not weakened by his long practice.

, a French surgeon under Henry IV. in whose service he was employed about 1590, attended that prince in the wars of Dauphiny, Savoy, Languedoc, and Normandy; and at Mothe-Frelon saved his life by bleeding him judiciously, in a fever brought on by fatigue. In consequence of this, he gained the full confidence of the king, and was made his chief surgeon. He was the author of a work entitled “L‘Apologie pour les Chirurgiens, centre ceux qui publient qu’ils ne doivent se meler de remettre les os rompus et demis.” He wrote also, “Paradoxes on the practice of Surgery,” in which some modern improvements are anticipated. His works are printed, with the surgery of Philip de Flesselle, at Paris, in 1635, 12mo.

, a French surgeon, was born in Paris in 1697, where his father was surgeon-major to the invalids. Sauveur received his literary education at the college Mazarin, and was instructed in his profession by his father at the hospital of the Invalids. He rose to the mastership of the company of St. Come (which was afterwards erected into the Royal Academy of Surgery), and was appointed demonstrator of surgical operations to that body in 1725. In 1728 he appeared as an author on the subject of lithotomy, and published his “Traite de la Taille au haut appareil, &c.” the high operation being then universally practised by the surgeons of Paris. But, in the following year he was commissioned by the Academy of Sciences to visit London, with a view of witnessing the lateral operation, as performed by Cheselden with so much success; and on his return to Paris, he introduced that mode of cutting for the stone, at the hospital of La Charite, which brought a crowd of pupils to his hospital, and multiplied his professional honours. He was admitted a member of many foreign societies, especially the Royal Society of London, into which he was admitted in 1728, and the academies of Stockholm, Petersburg!!, Florence, Bologna, and Rouen; and was nominated pensioner and professor of anatomy to the Royal Academy of Sciences at home. He held likewise several medical appointments in the army; and in 1751, was honoured with knighthood, of the order of St. Michael. He died in 1773, at the age of seventy-six.

, a French surgeon of eminence, was born at Laval, in the district of the Maine, in 1509. He commenced the study of his profession early in life, and practised it with great zeal both in hospitals and in the army; and when his reputation was at its height, he was appointed surgeon in ordinary to king Henry II. in 1552; and he held the same office under the succeeding kings, Francis II. Charles IX. and Henry III. To Charles IX. especially he is said to have on one occasion conferred great professional benefits, when some formidable symptoms had been produced by the accidental wound of a tendon in venesection, which he speedily removed. His services appear to have been amply acknowledged by the king; who spared him in the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew’s, although a protestant. “Of all those,”' says the duke of Sully, <c who were about the person of this prince (Charles IX.) none possessed so great a share of his confidence as Ambrose Pare“, his surgeon. This man, though a Huguenot, lived with him in so great a degree of familiarity, that, on the day of the massacre, Charles telling him, the time was now come when the whole kingdom would be catholics; he replied, without being alarmed, * By the light of God, sire, I cannot believe that you have forgot your promise never to command me to do four things namely, to enter into my mother’s womb, to be present in the day of battie, to quit your service, or to go to mass.‘ The king soon after took him aside, and disclosed to him freely the trouble of his soul: * Ambrose,’ said he, * I know not what has happened to me these two or three days past, but I feel my mind and body as much at enmity with each other, as if I was seized with a fever; sleeping or waking, the murdered Huguenots seem ever present to my eyes, with ghastly faces, and weltering in blood. I wish the innocent and helpless had been spared!' The order which was published the following day, forbidding the continuance of the massacre, was in consequence of this conversation.” Pare", after having been long esteemed as the first surgeon of his time, and beloved for his private virtues, died Dec. 20, 1590, at the age of eighty-one; and as he was buried in the church of St. Andrew, Eloy would from that circumstance infer that he died a Roman catholic, of which we have no proof.