Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 677

ANTOINE MAITRE-JAN (1650-1730) Traité des maladies de l'oeil et des remedes propres pour leur guerison. Chez Jacques le Febure 1707 [14] 593 (misnumbered 573) [1] pp. 24.9 cm.

Maître-Jan is sometimes called the father of French ophthalmology because of his many contributions to the field and for the writing of this large compendium on ophthalmology--the most complete and accurate of its day. The work contains extensive and detailed discussion of the diagnosis and surgical treatment of a wide variety of eye conditions, as well as a long section devoted to the medical treatment of cancer, infections, and injuries of the eye. Maître-Jan used poultices and dressings with compounds of such ingredients as zinc sulfate, copper sulfate, burnt rose water or beef fat for treating neoplasms, open lesions, infections, obstruction of the lacrymal ducts, and other such conditions. Before the late seventeenth century it was thought that a cataract was an opaque skin within the capsule of the optic lens. Although Maître-Jan proved by postmortem examination in 1692 that the cataract was a clouding and hardening of the lens itself, it was not until Michel Brisseau's (1676-1743) work on the same subject in 1709 that the medical community accepted it as fact. The method of treatment described by Maître-Jan is the couching operation in which, after incising the suspensory tissues of the lens, the lens was depressed below the level of the pupil and left in place. Actual extraction of the lens was first reported in 1753 by another French surgeon, Jacques Daviel (1696-1762).

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 5824; Waller 6166

Gift of John Martin, M.D.