Born in a small village of Ardèche, Ollier became, still in his youth, chief surgeon at the Hôtel Dieu of Lyons and later professor of surgical clinic at the Faculty. His experimental works carried on during his lifetime showed the role played by the periosteum in bone regeneration and established the rules of the success or failure of homo and heterografts. Utilizing clinically the periosteum capacities, he codified the osteo-articular resections in many traumatic and inflammatory diseases of the members, ensuring the superiority of the resections on the amputations and desarticulations. Taking profit of the innovations of his time: anaesthesia, antisepsis and radiography, he must be considered as one of the founders of French orthopedics.
