key: cord-0814962-b9yjw16u
authors: Barr, Justin; Schalick, Walton O.; Shortell, Cynthia K.
title: Surgeons in the Time of Plague: Guy de Chauliac in 14(th) Century France
date: 2020-07-27
journal: J Vasc Surg Cases Innov Tech
DOI: 10.1016/j.jvscit.2020.07.006
sha: 837ce9e8cef7a246c9ca116db55233517888a2a8
doc_id: 814962
cord_uid: b9yjw16u

nan

COVID-19 has engulfed our world. With millions sickened and hundreds of thousands 1 dead, the disease has utterly upended life around the globe. While devastating, the coronavirus 2 represents one of countless pandemics that have assailed humanity throughout history. The most 3 famous of these, the Black Death, struck globally in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, but 4 peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351. Bedeviling the curative efforts of doctors, kings, 5 sorcerers, and priests alike, the plague at least one-third of the continent's population. Guy de 6

Chauliac, a medieval practitioner known later as the father of Western surgery, worked 7 courageously caring for patients through the Black Death. 1,2 Examining Guy's experience 8 exposes how medical providers in the Middle Ages understood and treated this disease. It also 9 provides a sterling example of a surgeon committed to his patients above all else that we could 10 do well to heed in this modern time of uncertainty. social impacts. 8 Of the latter, he observed, "it was so contagious (especially that which involved 1 spitting of blood) that one man caught it from another not just when living nearby but simply by 2 looking at him; so much so that people died without servants and were buried without priests. 3

Father would not visit son, nor son, father; charity was dead, and hope prostrate." As in 4 contemporary times, medical responses were severely strained, so much so that, "physicians felt 5 useless and ashamed, inasmuch as they did not dare visit the sick for fear of infection; and when 6 they did visit them they could do very little and accomplished nothing…." 9 Becoming one of the 7 best-known plague treatises, this document bolstered Guy's reputation and became a standard 8 reference for contemporary clinicians studying the Black Death. 

Despite the apparent futility, Guy himself did not flee, unlike some physicians who 11 abandoned their charges. Ministering to his patients, he contracted a continuous fever and 12 "aposteme in the groin, surviving only due to god's will

Der schwarze Tod in Europa: Die Große Pest und das Ende des Mittelalters

Paravicini-Bagliani A. Il corpo del papa