Ambroise Paré (1510-1590), considered to be 'père de la chirurgie française' (father of French surgery), royal surgeon to four kings. Born in the French province, he revolutionised surgical practice despite having developed only a few entirely original methods. Paré's status as the ‘father of French surgery’ is not due to individual inventions, but primarily to the fact that, thanks to royal support, his voice could not be ignored. His revolutionary methodology for the time included empirical observation (instead of reading the classics), challenging dogma (rather than commenting on ancient authors), democratising knowledge (books in vernacular French rather than scholarly Latin) — thanks to his numerous widely circulated publications richly illustrated, his ideas and concepts found their target audience and drowned out the opinions of conservative opponents, while the status of surgeons was raised from that of modest craftsmen to the noble authority of university medicine.

Georg Bartisch (1535–ca.1607), famous German barber-surgeon, founder of modern ophthalmology.  Oculist, barber-surgeon, urologist, author of Ophthalmodouleia