Dupuytren, Guillaume

Dupuytren, Guillaume

 later Baron Dupuytren

(born Oct. 5, 1777, Pierre-Buffière, near Limoges, Fr.—died Feb. 8, 1835, Paris) French surgeon and pathologist. Dupuytren was the first to excise the lower jaw and to clearly describe the pathology of congenital hip dislocation. He revised the classification of burns and devised surgery for cervical cancer and for creation of an artificial anus, among other advances. He is best known for surgical procedures to alleviate Dupuytren contracture, in which fibrosis in the palm causes permanent retraction of one or more fingers.

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Dupuytren, Guillaume 

Born Oct. 6, 1777, in Pierre-Buffière; died Feb. 8, 1835, in Paris. French surgeon. Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1825) and Medical Academy (1820).

Dupuytren began studying medicine at the age of 12 in Paris and at 16 became a dissector and began lecturing on anatomy. Beginning in 1815 he was chief surgeon of the Hotel Dieu hospital and simultaneously (from 1812) occupied the chair of clinical surgery in the medical faculty of the University of Paris. Dupuytren developed surgical procedures for various operations: resection of the lower jaw (performed for the first time in medical practice), subcutaneous transection of the sternocleidomastoid muscles, and ligation of large arteries. He described fractures of the tibia and radius and contracture of the palmar aponeurosis (Dupuytren’s contracture, Dupuytren’s fracture). He was one of the first to work out the problem of setting old dislocations. After Dupuytren’s death, the Paris municipality founded a museum, naming it after him.

WORKS

Leçons orales de clinique chirurgicale faites à l’Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, vols. 1-6. Paris, 1832-34.
Mémoires sur une manière nouvelle de pratiquer l’operation de la pierre. Paris, 1836.

REFERENCES

Diday, P. “Guillaume Dupuytren.” Lyon médical, 1879, vol. 30, pp. 253, 303.
“Memoir of Dupuytren.” Lancet, 1834-35, vol. 1, pp. 820-25.