[Who did the first arterial ligation?].

It is usual to bestow on Ambroise Paré the discovery of arterial ligation. He himself substantiates this assumption describing how he discovered it on the battlefield. But the survey of the surgical literature lets us see that in France, Guy de Chauliac and Henri de Mondeville had already described it and performed it. And, before them, the Italian surgeons of the 13th and 12th centuries. It was also well known by the Arab speaking surgeons who detained the translations of the Greek medical authors of the Antiquity. And indeed the description is to be found in Paul ofAegina and Oribasius. But it is in Celsus's De re medica that we find the first description. It may be reasonably assumed that it is much oldest.