[Matthaus Gottfried Purmann (1649-1711). Contribution to the history of surgery]

Matthaus Gottfried Purmann (1649>>), born in Lublin, living 26 years in Wroclaw contributed considerably to the development of the German surgery. Purmann was a surgeon who established his position in the history of medicine not thanks to introducing of new surgical methods but mainly thanks to improving and describing of the surgical techniques used. He successfully performed complicated surgical operations i.e. Caesarean section, trepanation, tracheotomy, aneurysm resection. He was the author of several studies in the field of surgery. Since the editions of his works were limited they are a rarity now. Matthaus Gottfried Purmann achieved goods results in the field of war surgery. His attempts to give people transfusion of animal blood turned out to be unfortunate. In war surgery he tried to give bleeding soldiers transfusion of animal blood; all unsuccessful tries finally convinced him that Michael Ettmuller (1644-1683), a German physician was right when he proved in 1682 that blood transfusion is dangerous to life because of special differences between animal and human blood.