 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, Astley Cooper, and Dupuytren, that 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.