Felix Plater (1536–1614) was a Swiss physician, professor in Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

, well known for his classification of psychiatric diseases, and was also the first to describe an intracranial tumour (a meningioma

Meningioma

The word meningioma was first used by Harvey Cushing in 1922 to describe a tumor originating from the meninges, the membranous layers surrounding the CNS ....

).

Felix Plater was the son of humanist Thomas Platter

Thomas Platter

Thomas Platter was a Swiss humanist scholar and writer.His sons Felix Platter and Thomas Platter the Younger both studied medicine, a thwarted ambition of Platter's own early life...

, and the half-brother of Thomas Platter the Younger

Thomas Platter the Younger

Thomas Platter the Younger was a Swiss-born physician, traveller and diarist, the son of the humanist Thomas Platter the Elder....

. Plater's description of Dupuytren's disease in 1614 is explained with regard to his understanding of the anatomy. The current view that Plater believed the disease to be caused by dislocation and shortening of the flexor tendons is based upon misinterpretation of the original Latin text. With the help of his anatomical studies, Plater had proven that subcutaneous ligamentous extensions of the palmar aponeurosis and not the flexor tendons were responsible for Dupuytren's disease. Felix Plater realised more than one hundred and fifty years before Henry Cline

Henry Cline

-Life:Cline was born in London, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School. At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomas Smith, one of the surgeons to St. Thomas's Hospital, and before the close of his apprenticeship he frequently lectured for Else, then lecturer on anatomy. On 2 June...

, Astley Cooper

Astley Cooper

Sir Astley Paston Cooper, 1st Baronet was an English surgeon and anatomist, who made historical contributions to otology, vascular surgery, the anatomy and pathology of the mammary glands and testicles, and the pathology and surgery of hernia.-Life:Cooper was born at Brooke Hall in Brooke, Norfolk...

, and Dupuytren, the palmar aponeurosis was the anatomical substrate of the disease.

In the view of historian David Wootton, developed in the book Bad Medicine, Platter was the first proponent of the Germ theory of disease

Germ theory of disease

The germ theory of disease, also called the pathogenic theory of medicine, is a theory that proposes that microorganisms are the cause of many diseases...

.