Jean Baseilhac
Jean Baseilhac known as Brother Côme was a French surgeon and lithotomist.
Biography
Born near Tarbes, he came from a family of surgeons. In 1726, he went to practice in Paris and was attached to the Hôtel-Dieu. He already enjoyed a great reputation when he took the habit with the Feuillants in 1729. It was there that he received the name of Brother Jean de Saint-Côme, Saint Côme being the patron saint of surgeons. He founded at his own expense in Paris a hospice for the poor where he practiced in person. In 1767, through her solicitations from the Comptroller General Bertin, Jean Baseilhac, convinced of the usefulness of the courses she gave, obtained a patent for the famous midwife Angélique du Coudray.On July 1, 1750, Baseilhac performed his first cataract extraction, and may have been the trigger that caused two other cataract surgeons to begin performing with experimenting with cataract extraction in the first week of July 1750, thus initiating a revolution in ophthalmology, for which cataract couching had been the predominant technique since antiquity.
He is the ancestor of the president of the Commercial Court of Tarbes Jean Baseuilhac.