Pierre Bouchet

Pierre Bouchet (1752 to 1794) was a French physician and surgeon born in Lyon. He trained in medicine in Paris as a pupil of the surgeon Pierre-Joseph Desault, then returned to Lyon, where he became head surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu hospital. He is recorded as the first in France to modify and use a knotted-string snare to ligate and remove polyps of the uterus and vagina, and he also practised surgery for internal necrosis and drilling of the tibia. His son, Claude-Antoine Bouchet, was the first in France to ligate the external iliac artery to cure an aneurysm of the groin. Bouchet was remembered as kind and good-hearted and was held in high esteem by his fellow citizens. After the revolt of Lyon against the National Convention and the siege of the city by revolutionary armies, he suffered a stroke and died under arrest in 1794, exhausted in body and mind.