Ambroise Pare - An Alternative to Boiling Oil

I treated one soldier after another, pouring boiling hot oil into their wounds until my supply of oil ran out, yet more and more wounded were arriving and I had nothing to put onto their wounds. So I decided to mix an ointment, using egg yolks mixed with oil of roses and turpentine. I remembered this had been used since Roman times and as soon as it was ready I applied it to the soldier’s wounds. The next morning I examined the wounded. One who had been treated with my ointment was resting comfortably with his leg wound looking healthy. Others too who had received the ointment were alive and looked as if they would survive but those I had treated with the oil were in a terrible state, many of them were unconscious or had died already. I decided then and there I would never use the old oil method again. To stop the actual bleeding I tied silk thread around each blood vessel thus closing them up; this is called a ligature.