1686

Parisian barber-surgeon Charles François Félix de Tassy, surgeon to the court, successfully operates on Louis XIV for large perianal fistula, using two instruments he made for the operation: an enormous anal retractor and an ingenious, sickle-shaped knife – a scalpel with a semicircular probe on its end. He practiced the operation for two months on 75 impoverished citizen volunteers in a Parisian hospital (Van de Laar, ch 27; Fry)  “a shift in how the public viewed the craft of surgery. 1686 declared L’année de la Fistula  Royal approval for surgical amphitheater completed in 1695  new laws in 1699 that “gave rise to an important change in the composition of the Paris surgical community; surgeons with a university background and understanding of science began to divorce themselves from less educated . . barber-surgeons and illiterate tradesman . . .” (quotes from Rutkow, 94-95).