FRENCH SCHOOL circa 1820: Portrait of Pierre-Joseph... - Lot 32 - Pousse-Cornet

FRENCH SCHOOL circa 1820: Portrait of Pierre-Joseph Desault, chief surgeon of the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. Oil on panel with oval view. 28 x 22 cm. Wooden frame and gilded stucco decorated with palmettes, shells and pearls. Total dimensions of the frame: 44 x 38 cm. (Wear and small missing stucco). Chief surgeon of the Hôpital de la Charité in 1782 and then of the Hôtel-Dieu in 1788, Pierre-Joseph Desault taught anatomy on cadavers and no longer on wall boards or wax pieces. During the French Revolution, he devoted himself to the sick and wounded. In 1792 he was elected member of the health committee of the armies and became professor of surgical clinic at the new health school. In spite of this, he was arrested as a suspect in 1793 and only owed his release to a petition from about fifty doctors. In 1795, he was asked to treat the young son of Louis XVI: Louis XVII. He died himself during this treatment. Surgery owes him a great number of important inventions or improvements, among which we can highlight his devices for fractures, especially of the clavicle, and for diseases of the urinary tract, in which he was the first to use gum probes. In 2004, in Cassino (Italy), a symposium was dedicated to him as the inventor of nephrology. He was also one of the first to perform a tracheotomy.