1. William Cheselden was an English surgeon and teacher of anatomy and surgery, who was influential in establishing surgery as a scientific medical profession.
14 Facts About William Cheselden
1. 2.
William Cheselden studied anatomy in London under William Cowper, and began lecturing anatomy in 1710.
3.
William Cheselden was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1712 and the following year saw the publishing of his Anatomy of the Human Body, which achieved great popularity becoming an essential study source for students, lasting through thirteen editions, mainly because it was written in English instead of Latin as was customary.
4.
William Cheselden improved eye surgery, developing new techniques, particularly in the removal of cataracts.
5.
William Cheselden was selected as a surgeon at St George's Hospital upon its foundation in 1733.
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William Cheselden retired from St Thomas' in 1738 and moved to the Chelsea Hospital.
7.
William Cheselden's abode is listed as "Chelsea College" on the 1739 royal charter for the Foundling Hospital, a charity for which he was a founding governor.
8.
William Cheselden is credited with performing the first known case of full recovery from blindness in 1728, of a blind 13-year-old boy.
9.
William Cheselden presented the celebrated case of a boy of thirteen who gained his sight after removal of the lenses rendered opaque by cataract from birth.
10.
Berkeley knew the Dolins family, had numerous social links to William Cheselden, including the poet Alexander Pope, and Princess Caroline, to whom William Cheselden's patient was presented.
11.
William Cheselden is famous for the invention of the lateral lithotomy approach to removing bladder stones, which he first performed in 1727.
12.
William Cheselden had already developed in 1723 the suprapubic approach, which he published in A Treatise on the High Operation for the Stone.
13.
William Cheselden effected a great advance in ophthalmic surgery by his operation, iridectomy, described in 1728, to treat certain forms of blindness by producing an artificial pupil.
14.
William Cheselden attended Sir Isaac Newton in his last illness and was an intimate friend of Alexander Pope and of Sir Hans Sloane.