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Surgery often developed in France before it hits US
North Americans must wait years for ground-breaking procedures
By KARIN BASARABA
The French are often seen as creative and passionate, with a flair for the arts and food. But what many may not know is that they are also innovators in medical science, boasting a long list of surgical firsts.
The World Health Organization ranked the French health care system as the best in the world. But it’s not just the French that are able to utilize this progressive system. Medical tourists, when traveling overseas to France for treatment, are often being treated to the latest medical advances, which may not hit stateside for years.
MedSolution.com is partnered with three hospitals in France, each specializing in different areas. And all of these hospitals, located in historic Paris, feature surgeons who are continually raising the bar, attempting to make surgeries not only more effective, but less painful as well.
Throughout history, the French have strived to progress surgery and are usually leaders in their fields. But surgery wasn’t always seen as a necessary practice. In fact, many operations, such as removing tumors and stitching wounds, were left to barbers, who also cut hair and pulled teeth.
But then in 1316 Guy de Chauliac helped establish surgery as a serious science when he wrote Chirurgia Magna (Great Surgery). Because of this text, a new order of surgeons was born, who were studied physicians instead of barbers.
A couple hundred years later, Ambroise Paré, often called the father of modern surgery, successfully employed the method of tying off arteries to control bleeding. This eliminated the old method of searing the bleeding part with a red-hot iron or boiling oil.
Paré was the first to treat patients as human beings and cared as much about the healing as he did the process. One of his most famous quotes was: "Cure occasionally, relieve often, console always."
Post-surgical infections remained a serious complication of surgery until the mid-19th century when Louis Pasteur discovered that the decay and death of body tissue is caused by bacteria in the air. His discovery lead to the development of antiseptic techniques to kill germs in the operating room before surgery.
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