Narcesis J. Martinache, M.D.
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The Division of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology within the Department of Surgery at the University of California Medical School was directed by Professor N.J. Martinache, who served from 1873 to 1881
Dr. N. J. Martinache, member of the Faculty of Paris, and for many years eye and ear surgeon to the French Hospital in this city, died from apoplexy on the 23rd of December, 1892, in his fifty-ninth year. Known to many, yet known to few. His medical education had given him advantages scarcely equaled by any of his confreres. Having successfully passed through the long, exhaustive curriculum of a medical student in Paris, he filled for several years the position of "chef de clinique" in Dr. de Wecker's Eye Infirmary, one of the most renewed in the French Capital. Had he persisted in retaining that position, affording him full scope for scientific research and observation, an honorable career as teacher would have been assured him, his mind being attuned to medical investigation and clinical studies. Unfortunately he was prevailed upon to accompany Dr. W. F. Smith to this city in 1869, and from the start embarked in a large and lucrative practice. Painful domestic and professional circumstances caused him much distress for a few years, but the high regard and warm sympathy entertained for him by faithful friends was never lessened. During the course of his professional work, a source of great enjoyment to him, he was one of the first, if not the first, to earnestly recommend the treatment of ulcers of the cornea by actual cautery, an old method which had become almost obsolete; this fact alone would insure his name an honorable place in the history of ophthalmology.
