The treatment of war wounds is an ancient art, constantly refined to reflect improvements in weapons technology, transportation, antiseptic practices, and surgical techniques. Throughout most of the history of warfare, more soldiers died from disease than combat wounds, and misconceptions regarding the best timing and mode of treatment for injuries often resulted in more harm than good. Since the 19th century, mortality from war wounds steadily decreased as surgeons on all sides of conflicts developed systems for rapidly moving the wounded from the battlefield to frontline hospitals where surgical care is delivered....
The development of firearms made cautery a universally accepted treatment for gunshot wounds throughout the 16th century.
Gunshot wounds resulted in gross tissue destruction that was an excellent medium for infection. However, because surgeons of the era had no knowledge of bacteria, they concluded infection was the result of poisonous gunpowder, and sought to destroy the poison by pouring boiling oil into the wound [116]. The precise origin of this practice is uncertain, but it was widely popularized through medical texts written by an Italian surgeon, Giovanni da Vigo (1460–1525) [
41]. During the siege of Turin in 1536, Ambroise Paré (1510–1590), a surgeon with the French Army, ran out of boiling oil and substituted a salve of egg yolk, oil of rose, and turpentine, which, to his astonishment, reduced inflammation and enhanced patient comfort, at least compared with “seething oil” [
7]. He concluded conventional wisdom was incorrect and published his observations in his
Treatise on Gunshot Wounds in 1545.
