This issue’s cover features the bookplate used by the library of the Royal Academy of Surgery (Académie Royale de Chirurgie) in eighteenth-century Paris. The significance of that library manifests itself in two ways: in the development of surgery as an academic discipline and in that discipline’s relationship to the practice of medicine by physicians.

            For most of its history, surgery was considered a trade, to be learned by apprenticeship. In some cases, the occupation was practiced by barbers, presumably employing some of the same sharp implements they used to shave beards. Physicians, on the other hand, had university educations—medicine was one of the four medieval university curricula—and knew Latin, and so of course had a certain social standing; surgeons could usually claim none of these. This is not to say that exceptions did not exist, but the pattern is clear.

            During the sixteenth century, in France especially, surgery began to be practiced by men of increasing skill and intellect, such as Ambroise Paré, who did much to advance the status of the craft. In addition, it began to enjoy the favor of several French monarchs of the period, not the least of who was Louis XV, whose influence aided surgeons in overcoming the hostility of the medical profession. In 1731, French surgeons banded together to form a Royal Academy of Surgery, having succeeded a few years earlier in achieving the right to instruct in surgery at the university level. The College of Surgery (Ecole de Chirurgie) had been founded in 1724; it maintained very close ties with the Academy throughout their existences.

            Among the most important founders of the Academy was Francois de La Peyronie, surgeon to the king. He willed his own library to the Academy, where it went shortly after his death in 1747. This collection of 1,392 volumes, comprising 727 works, formed the foundation for the Academy’s library. In addition, about 800 books came from the library of the Master Surgeon of Paris (Maítre-Chirurgiens de Paris). Inventories of both collections still exist. The combined collection was kept in a gallery on the first floor of the building housing the school of surgery, and was maintained by a librarian, for some time one A. Henriques. In 1773 the school of surgery and the Academy, along with the library, moved into a handsome new building; Louis XVI himself was present at the dedication.

            The French Revolution brought a complete upheaval to this institution, as it did to nearly all others in French society. In 1793, the Academy’s royal charter was nullified, and the body was dissolved, although it had apparently become somewhat moribund by that time. The same fate befell the society of physicians and other similar groups. However, out of the upheaval came an important development. In 1794 a revolutionary decree abolished the distinction between surgery and medicine, creating schools of health (Ecoles de Santé) in Paris, Montpelier, and Strasbourg. At the same time the former library of the Academy, together with that which had belonged to the physicians, plus several other smaller collections were assembled to form the library of the new school in Paris.

            The new librarian of this collection was Pierre Süe, who had been professor and provost of the College of Surgery, and secretary of the Academy at the time of its dissolution. The reconstituted library began with a collection of about ten thousand volumes; with the long and outstanding service of Süe, it began its development into the medical collection of the present University of Paris.

            The Royal Academy of Surgery’s bookplate has been preserved in a number of volumes at the University. The arms are based on those belonging to the former master surgeons of Paris, and the legend in abbreviated Latin identifies the book as belonging to the Academy. Although most armorial bookplates of the period were printed from copperplate engravings, this one appears to have been reproduced from a woodcut.

Phillip A. Metzger

Southern Illinois University

School of Medicine Library