Jean Pitard

Jean Pitard was a French surgeon of the thirteenth century, born around 1228 near Bayeux and dead in Paris around 1315 at the age of eighty-seven. He served as royal surgeon to three kings of France in turn: Louis IX, Philip the Bold and Philip the Fair. At his request, around the year 1270, Louis IX created the Fraternity of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian, a body that defined and organized the profession of surgeons in France and gave their craft a recognized corporate standing separate from the university physicians. Pitard learned surgery as an apprentice and received no university training, and his source notes that because of this he was not weighed down by many of the medical and anatomical theories held by his contemporaries. The dates given for his birth and death are approximate, since the surviving account marks both with a tilde.