Francois Gigot de Lapeyronie (1678-1747), benefactor of surgery and supporter of the fusion of medicine and surgery, and the disease that bears his name.

Francois Gigot de La Peyronie, first surgeon to Louis XV definitively distinguished surgeons from the company of barbers and, by giving them a charter, placed them on an equal footing with physicians. The creation of Academie Royale de Chirurgie, in 1731, that LAPEYRONIE, presided for 11 years, put an end to the intolerable supremacy of medicine over surgery and contributed to the promotion of surgery. In 1743, he was the first to give a valid description of the disease that bears his name.