Guillaume Dupuytren

Rising from poverty in Limousin to become professor of operative medicine at age twenty-four, Dupuytren possessed unmatched anatomical knowledge, lightning surgical speed, and imposing diagnostic certainty, operating on over 10,000 patients without anesthesia.

In 1831, he performed the first successful surgical fasciotomy for palmar fibromatosis, permanently attaching his name to Dupuytren's contracture. Personal surgeon to Kings Louis XVIII and Charles X, who created him a baron, he bequeathed 200,000 francs to found the chair of pathological anatomy and the Musée Dupuytren in Paris.