THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GUILLAUME DUPUYTREN

At the time of Dupuytren's birth in 1777, France was still governed by an absolute monarch, Louis XVI. When Dupuytren died in 1835, he had lived through two revolutions (1789 and 1830), a republic, a 'Directoire', a consulate, an empire under Napoleon and another two royal restorations under Louis XVIII and Charles X.

Dupuytren was always closely involved in these historic events because he was in direct contact with the leading figures from the different periods, both privately and professionally. He played an important role in the organisation and reorganisation of medical surgical education. As the 'head surgeon' of the Hotel-Dieu hospital, the largest hospital in France, he treated not only a large and highly varied number of surgical patients, but also the victims of riots, insurrections, revolutions and wars, as well as victims of the cholera epidemic of 1832. His role in the development of modern surgery and surgical pathology was so overwhelming that the period during which he was 'head surgeon', is called the Dupuytren age in the history of surgery in France.

The name Dupuytren has become immortal in medicine, not only in the contracture of the palm, which he described in extreme detail, but also in a specific fracture of the fibula. His name also survives in road names, in the 'Musee Dupuytren', the museum of pathological anatomy at the medical faculty in Paris, in the new university centre of Limoges, which is named after him and in an amphitheatre at the Parisian hospital Hotel-Dieu. The anniversary of his birth and death are still commemorated in Pierre-Buffiere where he was born and in Paris where he studied, worked, lived and died. A statue of him has been erected in the inner courtyard of the Hotel-Dieu hospital in Paris and a memorial has been built in his place of birth.

The Life and Times of Guillaume Dupuytren spans a distressing era of French history (1777-1835), in which the centre of medicine moved from Italy to France, with Paris at its core. The author, plastic surgeon Prof. Dr. Paul Wylock, tells an exciting and beautifully illustrated story which will appeal to anybody with a professional or general interest in medicine, history or both.

Paul Wylock (deg1945, Ghent, Belgium) graduated as a Medical Doctor from the University of Ghent in 1970. He served as a general practitioner in the Belgian Army in Germany and trained in general surgery at the St Joseph Hospital in Venlo, the Netherlands. He then started his specialisation in plastic surgery, back in Ghent again, in the department of Prof Dr G. Matton, a pupil of Dr KL Pickrell at Duke University in N.C., US. He graduated as a Plastic Surgeon in 1978. In 1979 he pioneered the plastic surgery unit at the new academic hospital of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He was President of the Belgian Hand Group from 1990 to 1991, and started his presidency with a Dupuytren Day in his department in May 1990. Prof. John Hueston, J.C. van der Meulen and G. Mc Grouther were guests of honour. From 1996 to 2005 he was the national secretary of the Belgian Society of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery. He was President of the society from 2005 to 2007. In 2005 the society celebrated its 50th anniversary and became the Royal Belgian Society of Plastic Surgery. In December 2010 Paul Wylock will retire at the age of 65, after an active career entirely devoted to reconstructive plastic surgery, his lifetime's passion.