Henri Hartmann, lord of the Hôtel-Dieu

As assistant to Professor Terrier, Henri Hartmann (1860-1952) completed his surgical training at the Hôpital Bichat in Paris, where he was later to become Chief-Surgeon. In 1909 he was appointed Professor of Surgery in the Faculty of Medicine, and in 1914 he became head of the surgical clinic of the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris. It was in 1921 that Hartmann proposed the operation that thereafter was to bear his name. He reported on two patients with an obstructive carcinoma of the sigmoid colon, who, after having received a proximal colostomy, underwent resection with closure of the rectal stump as cul de sac. The operative procedure is described in Hartmann's book Chirurgie du rectum, which was published in 1931. Hartmann retired in 1930, greatly respected both in his own country and abroad.