Peter the great and cataract surgery.

Tsar Peter Alekseyevich Romanov (1672-1725), often called Peter the Great, modernized Russia in many areas, including in the field of medicine. Peter I attended medical lectures and demonstrations and may have even performed some medical procedures himself. In Paris, he witnessed a cataract couching performed by Englishman John Thomas Woolhouse (1664-1733/4) and requested that Woolhouse train a Russian student in ophthalmology.