Born in Ukraine into the Polish nobility, he reached Paris after the crushing of the insurrection of 1863 and specialised in diseases of the eye, a discipline the ophthalmoscope had just brought into being. His clinic in the rue Dauphine received all of Europe; he founded the Journal d'ophtalmologie.
The story
Born in Ukraine in 1832 into a family of the Polish nobility, Ksawery Gałęzowski studied medicine in Kiev, then in St Petersburg. The Polish uprising of January 1863 and its repression drove him into exile: he made for Paris, where a large Polish emigration was already settled.
He defended a second thesis there in 1865 and specialised in diseases of the eye, a discipline then in its infancy, which the invention of the ophthalmoscope ten years earlier had just transformed. In 1867 he opened an eye clinic on the rue Dauphine that drew patients from all over Europe: it would treat close to two hundred and sixty thousand of them in thirty years.
In 1872 he founded the Journal d'ophtalmologie, the first French monthly in the field, published a treatise on diseases of the eye that was reissued for thirty years, and trained generations of French, Polish and Russian practitioners. His diagnosis of disorders of the optic nerve became the standard.
One of the figures of the Polish emigration in Paris all his life, he died in 1907. He lies in Division 11, the Division where Chopin's grave stands too.
On site, do not miss
The Polish presence in Division 11: Chopin, Galezowski and several graves of the emigration trace there, without saying so, a Polish plot.
Visitors' questions
Where is Xavier Galezowski buried?
In Division 11 of Père-Lachaise. It is Frédéric Chopin's Division: two Poles of Paris, one dead in 1849, the other in 1907, a few paths and two generations of exile apart.
Frédéric ChopinWhy did Xavier Galezowski leave Poland?
Because of Russian repression. When the Polish rising of January 1863 was crushed he chose exile and reached Paris that same year, where the Polish emigration had been large since the Great Emigration of 1831.
Scientists & physicians at Père-LachaiseWhat did Xavier Galezowski bring to ophthalmology?
A clinic, a journal and a treatise. His clinic in the rue Dauphine, the Journal d'ophtalmologie he founded in 1868 and his treatise on diseases of the eye trained generations of practitioners in a discipline born with the ophthalmoscope.
Scientists & physicians at Père-LachaiseWhat else is there to see in Division 11?
Chopin's grave, under flowers all year round, that of the poet Jacques Delille and the cenotaph of Vincenzo Bellini, whose body was taken home to Catania in 1876. Division 11 is one of the busiest in the cemetery.
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