Georg Bartisch

Georg Bartisch (1535–1607), born in Saxony, was a barber-surgeon and pioneering eye specialist. Apprenticed at thirteen, he spent years as an itinerant surgeon before settling in Dresden as court oculist to the Saxon electors. Though he had no academic medical training, he became a skilled practitioner of eye surgery.

In 1583 he published Ophthalmodouleia, the first comprehensive German textbook of ophthalmology, with woodcuts of eye diseases and instruments and the first printed account of removing a diseased eyeball. Skilled but superstitious, he held that astrology, witchcraft and magic had a place in medicine.