AMBROISE PARÉ. Whilst the anatomy of the dental system was illustrated by the researches of Fallopius and Eustachius, the celebrated French surgeon Ambroise Paré was contributing in the highest degree to the progress of practical dentistry. [Illustration: Ambroise Paré.] Ambroise Paré (Latinized Paræus) was born at Bourg-Hersent in the year 1517. His father and one of his brothers were box-makers; another brother was a barber. We have no very precise information about the early years of his life; so much is certain, however, that Ambroise Paré did not enjoy any of those advantages deriving from a good literary education, and after having received some instruction from a chaplain, whose disciple and servant he was at one and the same time, he was bound over as apprentice to a barber, who also taught him the art of bleeding. Toward the age of sixteen we find him in Paris in the employ of a _chirurgien-barbier_. After this he practised minor surgery for some years in the Hôtel-Dieu. But having undertaken the study of surgery without literary preparation and without any knowledge of Latin, he was obliged, especially for the latter reason, to contend with great difficulties, so that, although he had acquired in a few years sufficient practice in surgery to enable him to pass from the Hôtel-Dieu to the sanitary service of the French army, it was only in 1554, that is, at thirty-seven years of age, that he was permitted to take the examination required for becoming a member of the College of Surgeons of Paris. Within the short space of five months he was successively named Bachelor, Licentiate, and Doctor in Surgery. His reputation, which had already become extraordinary even before he had any academic degree, procured him introduction to the Court of France as surgeon in ordinary. In 1562 he became chief surgeon to the Court and occupied this post under the reigns of Charles IX and Henri III. Ambroise Paré was a Protestant, and it is said that in the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s night, he owed his escape to the king, Charles IX, who, to save his life, hid him in his wardrobe. He died full of honors, in the year 1592. In his works this great surgeon treats the subject of dental maladies and their cure very thoroughly; this may be in part attributed to the circumstance of his having first been simply a barber (and, therefore, also a tooth-puller) and afterward a surgeon-barber, which placed him in very favorable conditions for acquiring vast experience in the practice of dentistry. In Chapter II, Book IV, of his works,[299] Ambroise Paré speaks of the anatomy and physiology of the teeth. It must, however, be confessed that Vesalius and, still more so, Eustachius treat of dental anatomy with much more exactness than he does.