Jacques Daviel's Summer 1750 Trip to the Meuse-Rhine Region and Newly Discovered Announcement of a Revolution in Eye Surgery.

Authors

Christopher Theodore Leffler, Stephen G Schwartz, Andrzej Grzybowski

Published in

Journal of cataract and refractive surgery. Sep 28, 2026. Epub Sep 28, 2026.

Abstract

Jacques Daviel (1696-1762) is credited with introducing planned primary cataract extraction. We analyzed historical books, newspapers, manuscripts, and documents discovered between 2004 and 2026, including previously unreported notices in the 1750 Gazette de Cologne. On July 7, 1750, Daviel performed an experimental crystalline lens extraction in a sheep before professors in Louvain. Although he later claimed to have performed cataract extractions in Liège, no contemporaneous documentation of those procedures survives. On September 10, 1750, he performed a witnessed sheep experiment before the Cologne medical faculty, and on September 18 performed a planned primary cataract extraction on the cleric Gilles Nouprez, whose immediate visual improvement was reported in the Gazette de Cologne. The newspaper announced Daviel's new technique on September 22, 1750, representing, to our knowledge, the earliest published documentation of planned primary cataract extraction.

PMID:
42803541
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 28 Sep 2026.

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