[Unpublished documents concerning Dupuytren]

In the present paper is proposed a first incursion in various archives - mainly notarial ones - concerning Dupuytren and his close relatives, investigated by the author. They will be more thoroughly dealt with in a forthcoming book. These documents give us a better knowledge of various events of Dupuytren's public and private life. They namely disclose the great challenge shown by the surgeon-in-chief of the Hôtel-Dieu in marrying his daughter Adeline in the midst of the Paris cholera epidemic in 1832. They show moreover in this unusual character the essential role continually played by some preoccupations such as nobility, power, religion and wealth, amidst a family of which he is the only member to have shown the ambition to become famous in the medical field.