How badly did Frère Jacques do in Paris? disputed

Positions

1. About 60 cut, 25 died

   Of 60 patients, 25 died, 13 were cured and 22 stayed in hospital crippled: about 42 per cent mortality. Given by the BAUS museum, the EAU biography and Goddard, probably from a single line of transmission.

   Sources

   1. BAUS Virtual Museum: Jacques de Beaulieu Museum or society dead link
   2. EAU History Office: Jacques de Beaulieu Museum or society
   3. J. C. Goddard, Urology News history series (the high operation; lithotomy; lithotrity) Secondary

2. 71 operated, 53.5 per cent died

   Ganem and Carson report 71 patients operated on at the Hôtel-Dieu and La Charité within one month, with 53.5 per cent mortality. They also say he often operated in under a minute and could do ten lithotomies in an hour.

   Sources

   1. Ganem and Carson 1999, Frère Jacques Beaulieu: from rogue lithotomist to nursery rhyme character (J Urol 161) Secondary

Evidence

No primary register of the series was read for the kit. Cheselden (1741), writing from report, estimated that the old method in Paris lost near two patients in five over more than 800 cases, so on either version Jacques's first series was no better than what it was meant to replace. His later results, after anatomical instruction and a grooved staff, were better: BAUS reports 38 successive patients at Versailles without a death (single source).

Current standing

Unsettled. The film gives the first version in rounded form, "about sixty" and "about twenty-five", and says the figures vary.

All sources