Concept

Charles Saint-Yves

Summary
Charles Saint-Yves, or Charles de Saint-Yves, (1667 – August 3, 1731) was a French ophthalmologist, famous for his treatment of the cataract and his treatise on ophthalmology. Saint-Yves was born in 1667 at Maubert-Fontaine (Ardennes, Northern France), out of a family affiliated to Marie de Guise, who called him and his elder brother (1660–1730) to Paris for becoming her pages. He subsequently took his vows at the Congregation of the Mission in 1686 and worked at the pharmacy, where he learned medicine and surgery. He subsequently specialised in eye pathology and left the priory of St Lazarus in 1711 when he set up his own practice at his elder brother's, rue Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle in Paris. His studies, and in particular his treatment of cataracts earned him a strong reputation all around Europe and many patients queued at his consultancy. From his lazarist past, Saint-Yves kept a strong sense of charity and sense for the poor, as well as for natives from his region of origin. Saint-Yves died in Paris on August 3, 1731, at the peak of his reputation and wealth. At the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, it became more and more clear that sight was not located in the lens, but that the deterioration of the latter was the actual cause of the cataract. In Paris, notably Pierre Brisseau (1631–1717) introduced his conclusions from eye dissection to the Academy of Medicine in 1705, before publishing a Traité de la Cataracte et du Glaucome (Treatise on cataracts and glaucoma, 1709), to be followed by Antoire Maître-Jean (Traité des maladies de l'oeil, Treatise on eye pathologies, 1707). These ideas allowed the introduction of new surgical treatments, and Saint-Yves achieved a first extract of a dislocated lens on a living patient in 1707 and stabilised his operating technique over a couple of hundred cases that first year. He also advised famous surgeon Jean-Louis Petit in his operation of the cataract in 1708. Cataract operation quickly spread in Paris afterwards.
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