Book excerpt: It is during the eighteenth century that the faltering march of surgery from empiric craft to scientific discipline began. French surgeons were prominent leaders of this evolution, and those practicing in Paris turned the capital into a surgical mecca attracting surgical students and mature professionals from all over Europe and even from America. They also created the Royal Academy of Surgery, soon the lodestar of the surgical world. During its sixty-two years’ existence, the academy published five tomes of memoirs, which became the surgical vade mecum for most of Europe.