Rediscovered: primary source sheds light on a pivotal moment in ophthalmology

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE

Cataract: JCRS Research Highlight

October 2026

by Liz Hillman
Editorial Co-Director

“You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.”

This adage applies to a paper recently published in the Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery (JCRS), adding to the history of the most common elective surgery performed worldwide: cataract surgery.

Jacques Daviel, MD, is credited with performing the first planned extracapsular cataract extraction. Recently Christopher Leffler, MD, Stephen Schwartz, MD, and Andrzej Grzybowski, MD, PhD, added to the history surrounding this procedure. In an article published online ahead of print in September 2026 in JCRS,¹ they announced previously unreported notices and details about Dr. Daviel’s first-in-human cataract extraction.

Leffler et al. wrote that Dr. Daviel performed the cataract extraction procedure on sheep eyes, followed by one on the Franciscan Father Gilles Nouprez on September 18, 1750. These procedures, both of which were witnessed by other physicians, were announced on September 22, 1750, in the Gazette de Cologne.

The article describes the sheep experiment as well as Dr. Daviel’s experience with Fr. Nouprez’s procedure. It states that the cataract taken from Fr. Nouprez was soft “with a consistency resembling starch paste.”

“Mr. Daviel has preserved the entire body of the cataract and displays it to anyone wishing to see it,” the notice read. “Immediately following the operation, the patient began to distinguish various objects presented to him, and no complications have arisen. Indeed, his condition has improved today—the fifth day since the operation. Among the many advantages of this new method, it restores sight the very moment it was lost—without relying on the chimerical distinction between ‘ripe’ [mûre] and ‘unripe’ cataracts—and it shields the patient from the drawbacks that accompany other methods, particularly the fear that the cataract might reappear, either wholly or in part.”

“Dr. Daviel’s introduction of cataract extraction is one of the pivotal transitions in ophthalmology,” Dr. Leffler wrote in an email to EyeWorld. “Since antiquity, eye doctors had pushed the cataract into the vitreous, a process termed couching. Dr. Daviel initiated extraction of the entire cataract, and this procedure survived, in one form or another, until the last decades of the 20th century. When I was a resident, we were still required to do a few ‘extracaps’ before we learned phacoemulsification. Dr. Daviel’s procedure is still the conceptual basis of the small-incision variants used today: phacoemulsification and manual small-incision cataract surgery (MSICS).”

Dr. Leffler said Dr. Daviel’s history is a story about how innovation happens. “The knives were sharp enough that the procedure could probably have been performed many centuries earlier. Why did the transition happen in 1750? When we look in detail at these innovations using primary source documents, the story unfolded differently from the canonical accounts,” Dr. Leffler said. “Dr. Daviel was not a lone genius toiling in isolation on a vision. He was one of three Paris-based ophthalmologists who were working on cataract extraction in the same week in 1750. All three were also lithotomists, and one can’t help but wonder if they applied insights from their other procedures to ophthalmology.”

During the peer review process of the JCRS article, one reviewer commented, “This is an interesting article, nailing down the dates of Daviel’s first cases. Much of the material has been published previously, but the new discovery falls into the category of a ‘fun fact’ and is relevant to our subspecialty. One could note that announcing a new advance in a non-scientific publication is something we still do today.”

Dr. Leffler said the article from the Gazette adds to the history in that we learned that Dr. Daviel performed the cataract extraction at the home of the editor of the Gazette de Cologne in front of the local medical faculty. The involvement of a local, non-scientific publication is significant. “Any readers of the report would know this was a procedure witnessed and attested to by known figures from the community,” Dr. Leffler said. “Newspapers were also affixed with a specific date. Most scientific findings were historically announced in books, which are dated only to the year of publication. Even the few scientific journals of the period published unmodified submissions by scientists or doctors that an editor deemed worthy of wider circulation. There was no ‘peer review’ as we understand today. Also, even today when a surgical case report is peer reviewed, how often can the anonymous peers attest that they have literally witnessed the procedure?”

Dr. Leffler said the research he put into this topic reinforces the importance of returning to primary sources. “Events that have been described repeatedly for more than two centuries can still look quite different when we go back to the documents produced by the people who were actually there,” he said. “There are still discoveries to be made in the history of medicine.”

Reference

1. Leffler CT, et al. Jacques Daviel’s summer 1750 trip to the Meuse-Rhine region and newly discovered announcement of a revolution in eye surgery. J Cataract Refract Surg. 2026. Online ahead of print.   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42803541/

Welcome to our History Questions Thread!

This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.

So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!

Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:

Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.

Hi everybody,

Welcome to our weekly book recommendation thread!

We have found that a lot of people come to this sub to ask for books about history or sources on certain topics. Others make posts about a book they themselves have read and want to share their thoughts about it with the rest of the sub.

We thought it would be a good idea to try and bundle these posts together a bit. One big weekly post where everybody can ask for books or (re)sources on any historic subject or time period, or to share books they recently discovered or read. Giving opinions or asking about their factuality is encouraged!

Of course it’s not limited to *just* books; podcasts, videos, etc. are also welcome. As a reminder, r/history also has a recommended list of things to read, listen to or watch here.

I mainly work on traditional farmhouse brewing in Europe, but I recently published "The Power of Beer", which covers the whole history of beer, from the beginning until now. It looks at how our relationship with beer has evolved over time, and how beer brewing has changed over time.

The scope is pretty wide: the Incas, prehistoric Europe, women and men as brewers, the introduction of hops, the rise of craft beer, history of lager, etc etc. As the title implies it also describes how rulers and states used beer to build real political power.

One of the things I wanted to do with the book was to dispel a lot of the myths about beer history, because a lot of what people have been told, and what is commonly written, is just not true. I'm hoping maybe I can do some of the same here.

I'll be answering questions from, roughly, 0900 CET on Wed Oct 21 onwards. I'll keep going all day and evening, or until questions run out.

So, ask me anything!

I felt like this was maybe more than enough text, but the subreddit apparently requires more text, so I'll go on listing subjects covered in the book that you might want to ask questions about:

• How and when our relationship with alcohol began
• How, when, and where beer brewing was invented (multiple times)
• How Asian, European, African, and South American native beers differ
• How the relationship between wine and beer got started
• The role of mead and cider
• The use of beer in the cult of the dead worldwide
• Prehistoric rulers in Europe using opulent drinkware to impress allies and rivals
• Roman beer brewing
• Beer and brewing in Egypt and Mesopotamia
• How beer brewing became a business, as opposed to something people did at home for themselves
• How hop use began, and spread
• The history of gruit (a spice mix effectively used as a form of tax)
• How lager brewing began, then spread a little, before freezing for a few centuries
• How beer created the Netherlands
• The rise of porter and IPA (in the UK)
• How IPA eventually "failed", turning into a very different beer
• Lager exploding onto the world scene from the 1840s
• The technological and scientific improvements made by breweries
• Modern Japan being built on sake taxes
• Japanese government getting too eager for sake taxes and almost killing sake entirely
• Prohibition (not an expert on that)
• How drinkers eventually revolted against the sameness of modern beer
• The rise of craft beer (including a craft sake revival), not just in the US, but elsewhere, too
• How, while brewers were modernizing beer for centuries, the farmers kept brewing their own beers in much the same way they'd done in the Middle Ages
• Tiny glimpses of farmhouse brewing on different continents
• The future

That is really a lot of detail required. I can't believe any Reddit user is actually going to skim through all this. Surely they have other things to do than read this very, very long list of stuff? I mean, they could just ask any question that comes to mind, instead of reading an entire book pasted into Reddit, right? Quite frankly I think this detail limit is a bit excessive. Okay, looks like I can finally post now.

(Note for anyone doing an AMA in the future: looks like what you need is not a long post, but a long paragraph in that post. Looks like a bug.)

Thank you all for your questions. Very good questions. I had fun answering them. I hope this was useful and interesting.

Welcome to our History Questions Thread!

This thread is for all those history related questions that are too simple, short or a bit too silly to warrant their own post.

So, do you have a question about history and have always been afraid to ask? Well, today is your lucky day. Ask away!

Of course all our regular rules and guidelines still apply and to be just that bit extra clear:

Questions need to be historical in nature. Silly does not mean that your question should be a joke. r/history also has an active discord server where you can discuss history with other enthusiasts and experts.

Hi everybody,

Welcome to our weekly book recommendation thread!

We have found that a lot of people come to this sub to ask for books about history or sources on certain topics. Others make posts about a book they themselves have read and want to share their thoughts about it with the rest of the sub.

We thought it would be a good idea to try and bundle these posts together a bit. One big weekly post where everybody can ask for books or (re)sources on any historic subject or time period, or to share books they recently discovered or read. Giving opinions or asking about their factuality is encouraged!

Of course it’s not limited to *just* books; podcasts, videos, etc. are also welcome. As a reminder, r/history also has a recommended list of things to read, listen to or watch here.