Eye Surgery in the Old Days

The first recorded eye surgery is in India, circa 800 BC. This comes down to us from Shushruta's Compendium, a collection of medical practices by surgeons and doctors in those long ago days.

I'm not sure about the "Know Sacred India as the Root of All Civilization" part by the link is pretty informative . . . I would be more inclined to place that root here . . . but check it out The Art of Surgery.

But here is the excerpt from the eye surgery: Shushruta specialised in ophthalmic surgery (extraction of Cataracts). A typically operation per formed by Shushruta for removing cataracts is desired below. "It was a bright morning. The surgeon sat on a bench which was as high as his knees. The patient sat opposite on the ground so that the doctor was at a comfortable height for doing the operation on the patient's eye. After having taken bath and food, that patient had been tied so that he could not move during the operation."

The doctor warmed the patient's eye with the breath ~ of his mouth. He rubbed the closed eye of the patient with his thumb and then asked the patient to look at his knees. The patient's head was held firmly. The doctor held the lancet between his fore-finger, middle-finger and thumb and introduced it into the patient's eye towards the pupil, half a finger's breadth from the black of the eye and a quarter of a finger's breadth from the outer corner of the eye. He moved the lancet gracefully back and forth and upward. There was a small sound and a drop of water came out.

"The doctor spoke a few words to comfort the patient and moistened the eye with milk. He scratched the pupil with the tip or the lancet, without hurting, and then drove the 'slime' towards the nose. The patient got rid of the 'slime' by drawing it into his nose. It was a matter of joy for the patient that the could see objects through his operated eye and the doctor drew the lancet out slowly. He then laid cotton soaked in fat on the wound and the patient lay still with the operated eye bandaged. It was the patient's left eye and the doctor used his right hand for the operation."