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.
