Pierre-François PERCY

The story

Born in 1754 at Montagney, the son of a surgeon, Pierre-François Percy entered the service of the armies and spent his life there. Military surgery under the old monarchy meant waiting for the fighting to end before gathering up what could be saved: the wounded died on the ground, of haemorrhage and cold, and a bullet wound left twelve hours without care left almost no chance. Armies lost more men after a battle than during it.

Percy reversed the principle. He designed mobile surgical ambulances — the “wurst”, a long wagon carrying surgeons and instruments — able to follow the troops and to work close to the line. With Larrey, who was developing flying ambulances of his own, he established the idea that help must go to the wounded man and not the reverse. The principle seems obvious today; it meant then bringing non-combatants and heavy equipment into the zone of fire.

He created the corps of surgeon stretcher-bearers, charged with lifting men under fire, and gave it an organisation, equipment of its own and a recognised place in the order of battle — the direct ancestor of the stretcher-bearers every army keeps today. He served through the campaigns of the Revolution and then of the Empire, operating on every front, and became surgeon-in-chief of the Grande Armée and then a baron of the Empire. He left a Manuel du chirurgien d'armée.

He died in 1825, at seventy. His name is carved on the Arc de Triomphe among the great servants of the Empire, and a military hospital at Clamart bears it. The idea he imposed — treat during the battle, not after it — passed into every army in the world and still shapes civilian trauma care, from road accidents to terror attacks. His epitaph, in Division 18, holds in a single line: “Il fut le père des chirurgiens militaires” — he was the father of military surgeons.