Claude-Nicolas Le Cat

Claude-Nicolas Le Cat was a French surgeon and science communicator, born at Blerancourt in Picardy in 1700 and dead at Rouen in 1768. The son and grandson of surgeons, he studied anatomy and surgery with his father and then in Paris from 1726. He became surgeon to the Archbishop of Rouen in 1728, deputy head surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu of Rouen in 1731, took a medical doctorate at Reims in 1733 and became a master surgeon in Rouen the next year, then lectured on anatomy and surgery and in 1736 received the title of royal professor and demonstrator. In 1744 he founded the Academie royale des sciences, belles lettres et arts of Rouen and was its lifelong secretary for sciences and arts. In 1732 he performed a lateral lithotomy for bladder stones and devised an instrument for it, the gorgeret cystotome, and he is credited with the first removal of a bladder polyp through the dilated urethra and a great advance in cataract surgery. His Traite des sens appeared in 1744.