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Yperman was sent by his fellow-townsmen to Paris in order to study surgery, because they wanted to have a good surgeon in their town and Paris seemed the best school at that time. Ypres was at this period one of the greatest commercial cities of Europe, and probably had a couple of hundred thousand inhabitants.

Two distinguished surgeons whose names have come down to us, having studied in Paris after Lanfranc had created the tradition of great surgical teaching there, came to their homes to be centres of beneficent influence among their people in this matter. One was Yperman, of the town of Ypres in Belgium; the other Ardern of England.

Yperman's work was practically unknown to us until Broeck, the Belgian historian, discovered manuscript copies of his book on surgery and gathered some details of his life. After his return from Paris, Yperman obtained great renown, which maintained itself in the custom extant in that part of the country even yet of calling an expert surgeon an Yperman. He is the author of two works in Flemish.