Though Guillaume Dupuytren is famous in medical books as a pioneer of plastic
surgery, this intriguing biography is the first to describe his private life
and career against the cultural and political landscape of Napoleonic France.
As this work details, as the head surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu hospital, the
largest hospital in France, Dupuytren treated not only a large and highly
varied number of surgical patients, but also the victims of riots,
insurrections, revolutions, and the cholera epidemic of 1832. Following his
rise to prominence, this biographical account shows how Dupuytren then become
became the surgeon of King Louis XVIII and a friend to powerful figures such as
Baron James de Rothschild and Baron Alexander von Humboldt.
