Georges Mareschal

Georges Mareschal was a French surgeon, born at Calais in Picardy in 1658 and dead at the Château de Bièvres in 1736. The son of an Irish gentleman, John Marshall, who had been knighted for service at the battle of Rocroi, he moved to Paris in 1677 and worked there as a surgical assistant. From 1684 he served at the Hôpital de la Charité, becoming master surgeon in 1688 and chief surgeon in 1692. He became first surgeon to Louis XIV, attending the king on his deathbed, and then to Louis XV. He was ennobled in 1707 and known thereafter as seigneur de Bièvre, and in 1723 he received the Order of Saint-Michel for successfully treating the Infanta of Spain. In 1731 he founded the Académie Royale de Chirurgie together with François Gigot de la Peyronie, and he is credited with improvements in the surgery of bladder stones, lithotomy.