The 1585 edition of Par矇's Oeuvres (Collected Works) represents the final summary of his life's work. It has over twelve hundred folio pages, with nearly four hundred illustrations drawing upon a lifetime of practice. Four editions of the Oeuvres were published during his lifetime, and this is the last and the most complete. It closes with a long autobiographical essay in which he looks back upon his career with both satisfaction and humility. Often his descriptions of difficult cases end with the same simple sentence, "I treated him, but God cured him." Ambroise Par矇 (1510 - December 20, 1590) was a French surgeon, anatomist and inventor. He was royal surgeon for kings Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III and is considered one of the fathers of surgery and modern forensic pathology. He was a leader in surgical techniques and pioneered modern battlefield wound treatment. Battlefield medicine is the treatment of wounded soldiers in or near an area of combat. Civilian medicine has been greatly advanced by procedures that were first developed to treat the wounds inflicted during combat. Par矇 introduced the ligature of arteries instead of cauterization during amputation. He believed that phantom pains occurred in the brain. He contributed to the practice of surgical amputation and the design of limb prostheses. He died in 1590 from natural causes.