Why is it called “Dupuytren”?

Guillaume Dupuytren (1777-1835) was Napoleon’s surgeon, and in his time was the most famous surgeon in France. In 1831 at the Hotel-Dieu Hospital in Paris, he performed surgery and then lectured on a condition causing bent fingers, which since has borne his name. Dupuytren was not the first to describe the condition – it could just have well been called “Cooper’s Contracture”: Sir Astley Cooper published a description of the disease and its surgical treatment in England nearly 10 years before Dupuytren. Others preceded him in describing the condition, including anatomist Felix Plater 200 years earlier.