Jacques Daviel

Jacques Daviel (11 August 1696 – 30 September 1762[1]) was a French ophthalmologist credited with originating the first significant advance in cataract surgery since couching was invented in antiquity.

[2] Daviel performed the first documented planned primary extracapsular cataract extraction on 18 September 1750 in Cologne on a clerical official named Gilles Noupres.

[4] He was on the staff of Hospital d'Invalides and became oculist to Louis XV.

[5] In 1759, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Daviel died of apoplexy in 1762 while on a trip to Geneva, Switzerland.