Louis Joseph Sanson

Louis Joseph Sanson was a French surgeon and ophthalmologist, born in Paris on 24 January 1790 and died there on 2 August 1841. He obtained his medical doctorate in 1817 and became a surgeon to the Bureau central in 1823. The following year he was appointed second surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu de Paris, and in 1830 he received his agregation as a professeur agrege. For a period he headed the ophthalmologic clinic at the Hotel-Dieu, and in 1836 he succeeded his teacher and friend Guillaume Dupuytren as professor of clinical surgery. His name is attached to the Purkinje-Sanson images, the reflections of a light source from the front and back surfaces of the cornea and of the crystalline lens, named jointly with the Czech physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyne.