Vicariate Apostolic of Dahomey
Father Damien (Joseph de Veuster)
Antoine-Elisabeth Dareste de la Chavanne
Victor Augustin Isidore Dechamps
Feast of the Dedication (Scriptural)
Defender of the Matrimonial Tie
Definitors (in Religious Orders)
Dei gratia Dei et Apostolicæ Sedis gratia
Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix
Ambrose Lisle March Phillipps De Lisle
Prefecture Apostolic of the Delta of the Nile
Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Michael Denis
Jacques-René de Brisay Denonville
Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger
Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin
Deus in Adjutorium Meum Intende
Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno
Melchior, Baron (Freiherr) von Diepenbrock
Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite
Institute of the Divine Compassion
Daughters of the Divine Redeemer
Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger
Emmanuel-Henri-Dieudonné Domenech
Ferdinand-François-Auguste Donnet
Juan Francesco Maria de la Saludad Donoso Cortés
Clemens August von Droste-Vischering
Louis-Guillaume-Valentin Dubourg
Phillippe-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Tronson Du Coudray
Daniel Greysolon, Sieur Du Lhut
Felix-Antoine-Philibert Dupanloup
Archdiocese of Durango (Durangum)
Surgeon and anatomist, b. at Magny-Vernois a small town of Franche-Comté, France, in 1744; d. 1 June, 1795. His parents were poor and he received his education from the Jesuits. He began his studies for the priesthood but gave this up for the study of medicine. His means not permitting him to go to a regular school of medicine he became an assistant to the barber-surgeon of his native village and then took a similar post at the military hospital of Belfort. His favourite studies were anatomy and mathematics and he applied mathematical principles to his anatomical investigations. Borelli had done this with excellent results and Desault translated Borelli's "De Motu Animalium" with notes and illustrations. He was not yet twenty when he went to Paris where, in 1766, after two years, he opened a school of anatomy. So practical and thorough were his methods of teaching that he soon had three hundred students, many of them older than himself. In order to protect himself form professional jealousy, as he had no degree, he opened his school under the name of a man already privileged to teach but whose name is not now known. Teaching brought him reputation but not much profit, and when in 1776 he was admitted to the Academy of Surgeons, he was allowed to pay his fees by instalments. In 1782 he became chief surgeon to the Charity Hospital and not long after surgeon to the Hôtel-Dieu. He was now looked upon as the most prominent surgeon in Paris and founded a school of clinical surgery which attracted students from all sides. In 1793 he was imprisoned by the revolutionary authorities but after three days was liberated through the influence of his patients. He died from pneumonia, the result of exposure while attending the Dauphin in the Temple. He wrote a treatise on surgical operations in three volumes; a treatise on fractures and luxations, edited by Xavier Bichat, was published after his death and was translated into English in 1805 going through three American editions. Desault's contributions to surgery are contained in the "Journal de Chirurgie" published by himself and pupils.
PETIT, Eloge de Desault (Lyons, 1795); GUÉRIN, Discours in Bulletin de l'Académie de médicine (Paris, 1876).
JAMES J. WALSH