DESAULT, PIERRE JOSEPH French anat omist and surgeon, was born at Magny-Vernois (Haute Saone) on Feb. 6, 1744. He served as an apprentice in the military hos pital of Belfort, and in 1782 he was appointed surgeon-major to the hospital De la Charite, and in 1788 to the Hotel Dieu. The clinical school of surgery which he instituted at the Hotel Dieu attracted great numbers of students, not only from every part of France but also from other countries ; and he frequently had an audience of about boo. He died in Paris on June r, 1795. To gether with Francois Chopart (1743-95) he published a Traite des maladies chirurgicales (1779), and Bichat published a digest of his surgical doctrines in Oeuvres chirurgicales de Desault (1798-99).