François Chopart

François Chopart (1743 to 1795) was a French surgeon born in Paris. He trained at the Hotel-Dieu, Pitie and Bicetre hospitals, became professor of practical surgery at the Ecole pratique in Paris in 1771, and in 1782 succeeded Toussaint Bordenave in the chair of physiology. He was a pioneer of urological surgery and stressed treating the urinary tract as a whole, setting out his views in a two-volume treatise on diseases of the urinary passages published in 1791 and 1792. With Pierre-Joseph Desault he wrote a treatise on surgical diseases and their operations. Three eponyms in the foot carry his name: Chopart amputation, Chopart fracture-dislocation and the Chopart joint, the transverse tarsal joint. He died in Paris in 1795 during a cholera epidemic.