He then poses a question of following the footsteps of his grandfather, his great-uncle and his uncle in the path of surgery, École Militaire de Saint-Cyr to take on a military career.

He was an intern in 1902, then a doctor of medicine by supporting a thesis on the technique of surgical resection in the treatment of stomach cancer in 1906, under the direction of Antonin Poncet.

In April 1917, wishing for a long time return to the front, René Leriche joined Robert Proust and his team of Auto-chir (ACA n o 17).

Leriche was asked by the Lyon histologist and radiobiologist Claudius Regaud to enter the training he was preparing for to serve as a "School of Medicine and War Surgery in HOE 4 de Bouleuse, near Reims.

It became such a renowned centre of instruction and improvement for all physicians and surgeons who passed it that it was decided to admit into active formation the newly-arrived Americans.

René Leriche found several great names in medicine: the brilliant specialist in thoracic surgery Jean-Louis Roux-Berger (well ahead of what was done elsewhere), Lemaître who will remain the creator of the primitive suture of the wounds, the neurologist Georges Guillain, Lyon radiologist Thomas Nogier and pathologist Pierre Masson.

With the help of Paul Santy, Leriche undertook very extensive research work on osteogenesis and was particularly interested in repairing fractures with experiments carried out on rabbits, and he was already pursuing scholarly reflections on the role of vasa motricity in the site of trauma.

During the war, Leriche's idea was to differentiate the traditional white linen in which the wounded were brought from the laundry of the aseptic surgical operating rooms.

A stay in the United States allowed for him to meet Simon Flexner (who advocates "smooth" surgery) at the Rockefeller Foundation and then William Halsted in Baltimore but a number of surgeons also had an influence on him.

Back in Lyon after the armistice of 22 June 1940, he declined the post of health minister who was offered by the French head of state, Philippe Pétain.

He, however, accepted the presidency of the National Order of Physicians, created in October 1940 by the Vichy règime, which strengthened the state's hold over the organization of medicine, supported the numerus clausus in medical studies and applied an important role in the exclusion of Jewish doctors by participating in their denunciation and especially the process of despoiling "vacant" practices.