Lesauvage was born in Caen on October 23, 1778. His father Jean-Jacques Sauvage worked in the Bureau des Aides while his mother Marie-Louise-Jeanne Coquille ran a pottery and tobacco shop to add to the modest family income. Lesauvage spent his early years in a boarding school in a village near Caen where he was taken care of by an uncle. He was unhappy with school and was recalled due to his petulant behaviour and became an apprentice to a grocer at the age of fourteen or fifteen. He then moved to live in Rouen where he came to love books and reading returned and at the age of seventeen. He studied for a while under Delariviere and then under Doctor Dominel before going to Paris to study medicine. He won the first prize in Anatomy from 1806 to 1808 and obtained a doctorate in 1810. He returned to Caen and established himself as a skilled surgeon. In 1821 he was chosen to replace the medical head position occupied by Desbordeaux and vacated due to his death. The Caen Faculty of Science had to make a choice between Lesauvage and Eugène Eudes-Deslongchamps and the Deslongchamps was chosen. Lesauvage then continued his surgical practice until 1846. After the death of Dr. Dominel in 1831 he was the head of surgery, a position he held till 1846.
