My Lord Marshal Montejan remained Lieutenant-General for the King
in Piedmont, having ten or twelve thousand men in garrison in the
different cities and castles, who were often fighting among
themselves with swords and other weapons, even with arquebuses.
And if there were four wounded, I always had three of them; and
if there were question of cutting off an arm or a leg, or of
trepanning, or of reducing a fracture or a dislocation, I
accomplished it all. The Lord Marshal sent me now hire now there
to dress the soldiers committed to me who were wounded in other
cities beside Turin, so that I was always in the country, one way
or the other.
M. the Marshal sent to Milan, to a physician of no less
reputation than the late M. le Grand for his success in practice,
to treat him for an hepatic flux, whereof in the end he died.
This physician was some while at Turin to treat him, and was
often called to visit the wounded, where always he found me; and
I was used to consult with him, and with some other surgeons; and
when we had resolved to do any serious work of surgery, it was
Ambroise Pare that put his hand thereto, which I would do
promptly and skilfully, and with great assurance, insomuch that
the physician wondered at me, to be so ready in the operations of
surgery, and I so young. One day, discoursing with the Lord
Marshal, he said to him:
"Signor, tu hai un Chirurgico giovane di anni, ma egli e vecchio
di sapere e di esperientia: Guardato bene, perche egli ti fara
servicio et honore." That is to say, "Thou hast a surgeon young
in age, but he is old in knowledge and experience: take good
care, of him, for he will do thee service and honour." But the
good man did not know I had lived three years at the Hotel Dieu
in Paris, with the patients there.
In the end, M. the Marshal died of his hepatic flux. He being
dead, the King sent M. the Marshal d'Annebaut to be in his place:
who did me the honour to ask me to live with him, and he would
treat me as well or better than M. the Marshal de Montejan. Which
I would not do, for grief at the loss of my master, who loved me
dearly; so I returned to Paris.
THE JOURNEY TO MAROLLE AND LOW BRITTANY. 1543
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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