François Chopart (20 October 1743 – 9 June 1795) was a French
surgeon
In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...
born in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
.

He was trained in medicine at the
Hôtel-Dieu,
Pitié and the
Bicêtre hospitals. In 1771 he became a professor of practical
surgery
Surgery is a medical specialty that uses manual and instrumental techniques to diagnose or treat pathological conditions (e.g., trauma, disease, injury, malignancy), to alter bodily functions (e.g., malabsorption created by bariatric surgery s ...
at the ''
École pratique'' in Paris, and in 1782 succeeded
Toussaint Bordenave (1728–1782) as chair of
physiology
Physiology (; ) is the science, scientific study of function (biology), functions and mechanism (biology), mechanisms in a life, living system. As a branches of science, subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ syst ...
.
Chopart was a pioneer of
urological surgery, putting emphasis on dealing with the
urinary tract as a whole. In 1791/92 he published the two-volume ''Traité des maladies des voies urinaires''.
François Chopart - bibliography
at Who Named It
With Pierre-Joseph Desault (1744–1795), he was author of the surgical treatise ''Traité des maladies chirurgicales et des opérations qui leur conviennent''. There are three eponyms associated with the foot that are named after him:
* "Chopart's amputation": Separation of the forefoot at the mid tarsal joint.
* " Chopart's fracture-dislocation": Dislocation of the foot through the talonavicular and calcaneocuboid joints along with associated fractures.
* "Chopart's joint" or the transverse tarsal joint: Articulation between the hindfoot and the midfoot.
In 1795 François Chopart died in Paris during a cholera
Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...
epidemic.
References
''François Chopart''
@ Who Named It
External links
*
1743 births
1795 deaths
French surgeons
French medical writers
Academic staff of the University of Paris
Physicians from Paris
French male non-fiction writers
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