Vienna and cataract surgery over the past 250 years

In the history of cataract surgery, Vienna and the Viennese have played a decisive role during the last 250 years. The present paper attempts to recount some important episodes of the Vienna history of cataract surgery and its characters. Most important were the Baron Wenzel, who introduced the new cataract extraction to Vienna and thus paved the way for the newly developing Vienna ophthalmology, Joseph Barth, the first Professor for eye diseases, his pupils Johann Adam Schmidt, who was Beethoven's doctor, and Joseph Beer, the first professor in ordinary for our subject, Beer's son-in-law Friedrich von Jaeger, Ferdinand von Arlt and his pupils Rosa Kerschbaumer and the Bavarian Duke Carl Theodor, and finally Karl Koller, the inventor of local anesthesia, and the adopted Viennese Anton Elschnig, who established intracapsular capsular extraction all over Europe.