In 1567, a condemned cook swallowed poison to test a legendary bezoar stone, part of a grim experiment by a doctor determined to dismantle medical myth through observation. That doctor was Ambroise Pare, the 16th-century French barber surgeon who became the father of modern surgery, forensics, and battlefield medicine.

This episode traces how an uneducated apprentice trusted his own eyes over ancient texts. When Pare ran out of boiling oil on the battlefield, his improvised ointment revealed a gentler, more effective treatment. It follows his revival of ligatures over cauterization, his work on prosthetics and phantom limb pain, his obstetric advances, and his survival of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

• The accidental clinical trial that discredited pouring boiling oil into wounds
• Inventing the "crow's beak" forerunne ...