Portrait of the French surgeon Ambroise Pare (1510-1590). Pare is considered to be the father of modern surgery. Working in the army as a barber-surgeon Pare introduced several new techniques in surgery. In those days wounds made by swords and early guns were treated with boiling oil and bleeding was often stopped by cauterizing the wounds without anaesthetics. He introduced the application of clean dressings to heal wounds, in order also to reduce the pain caused by the old methods. Pare set up the use of ligature (tying off blood vessels) in amputations, devised clever artificial limbs and improved obstetrical methods.