Paul Jules Tillaux

Paul Jules Tillaux was a French physician and surgeon, born in 1834 at Aunay-sur-Odon in Calvados. He became a professor of surgery in Paris and in 1879 a member of the Académie de Médecine, and from 1868 to 1890 he directed the Amphitheatre d'Anatomie des Hôpitaux de Paris. In 1892 he was the first physician to describe an uncommon Salter Harris Type III fracture of the tibia. Working on cadavers, he found that stress on the anterior inferior tibiofibular ligament could produce this avulsion fracture, which is unusual because it occurs only in a certain period of adolescence, when the growth plate closes at different rates. In his honour a fracture of the anterolateral tibial epiphysis is called a Tillaux fracture. It is often misdiagnosed as a simple sprain, and a similar fracture of the posterolateral tibia, later identified by Henri Chaput, is known as the Tillaux-Chaput fracture.