In 1669, Dionis was surgeon of the King and chirurgien par quartier of the Queen Maria Theresa.[note 1]
On 31 July 1671, the King Louis XIV appointed François Cureau de La Chambre as a Démonstrateur opérateur pour l’intérieur des plantes[note 2] of the Botanical Garden (Jardin des Plantes). Too busy with his duties, François Cureau de La Chambre appointed Pierre Cressé, to read the lectures, while Pierre Dionis performed the actual dissections.[1][2]
He was appointed surgeon by Louis XIV in 1672 to teach at the Jardin des Plantes “anatomy according to the circulation of the blood”, while the Faculty of Medicine in Paris contested William Harvey's discovery of blood circulation. Louis XIV had sided with the Moderns of the Garden against the Ancients of the Faculty.[3]
His work, "L'anatomie de l'homme suivant la circulation du sang et les dernières découvertes" (The anatomy of man according to the circulation of the blood and the latest discoveries), 1690, was a prodigious success and was even translated into Tartar.[4]
^ abVons, Jacqueline (2018). "Pierre Dionis, chirurgien aulique et maître chirurgien juré (1643-1718)"(PDF). Santé et médecine à la cour de France (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles): [Actes du colloque international, 19-20 octobre 2017, Paris] (in French). Stanis Perez, Jacqueline Vons: 53–64. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
^An extract was published in William Cheselden's A treatise on the high operation for the stone, 1723: OCLC230988856. An extract from Dionis on the fistula of the anus was included (p.157) in the English translation (1738) of a work by Jean Astruc