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Home  »  Journeys in Diverse Places  »  The Journey to Bayonne. 1564

Ambroise Paré (1510–90). Journeys in Diverse Places.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

The Journey to Bayonne. 1564

I WENT with the King on that journey to Bayonne, when we were two years and more making the tour of well-nigh all this kingdom. And in many towns and villages I was called in consultation over sundry diseases, with the late M. Chapelain, chief physician to the King, and M. Castellan, chief physician to the Queen-mother; honorable men and very learned in medicine and surgery. During this journey, I always inquired of the surgeons if they had noted anything rare in their practices, so that I might learn something new. While I was at Bayonne, two things happened worthy of remark by young surgeons. The first is, I dressed a Spanish gentleman, who had a great and enormous swelling of the throat. He had lately been touched by the deceased King Charles for the king’s evil. I opened his swelling…. I left him in the hands of a surgeon of the town, to finish his cure. M. de Fontaine, Knight of the Order of the King, had a severe continued pestilent fever, accompanied with many inflammatory swellings in sundry parts of the body. He had bleeding at the nose for two days, without ceasing, nor could we staunch it: and after this hæmorrhage the fever ceased, with much sweating, and by and bye the swellings suppurated, and he was dressed by me, and healed by the grace of God.