The first steps of medicine, against the advice of physicians of the day!

At the time aeuvraient doctors to send their patients to the grave, using the bloodletting and purging, rather than trying to cure them really, it was men who, for their part, cared for good, their best: barbers surgeons.

The latter being despised by the learned scholars, more educated Latin than science, they were organized in brotherhood with training and mastery. Omitted the impecunious and foot soldiers going into the war, the battlefield where only the emergency was law, academic title of the doctors were busy as large in order to increase wealth and fame. In this context, there is one who surpassed his generation in the art hospital, up to write notes on medical cases transiting in his hospital: He asked where the foundations of modern medicine.

This novel, well documented, both in the medical practice of the seventeenth century, on the Lorraine country is a treat for the reader. On background romance between a barber and a matron under Louis XIV, the author takes us to the front battles against the Ottoman. Combining surgeries and light episodes; wielding as the divine bottle the scalpel, the team of Nicolas Deruet leads us into the health history. An adventure novel, on a sound historical basis that will delight all curious.

Trained in biology and surgical techniques, I delighted in these pages; even my wife, modern matron now that the midwife called, it was found with pleasure the basis of his art. A highly recommended novel, for large and less large, so it is instructive and exciting to read.