Who Discovered Cataracts?

Cataracts have been a vision problem for people throughout history. Since its original diagnosis, different cultures had varying methods of addressing the condition, which eventually caused blindness in patients. Today, treatment with outpatient surgery can reverse the effects of cataracts on vision fairly easily.

Identification

• Most often the result of aging, diabetes, genes, or trauma to the eye, a cataract is a clouding of the clear lens behind the iris of the eye. It produces a fogginess that impairs the transparency of the lens, leading to loss of vision and sometimes blindness, if left untreated. Surgery is the best way to treat a serious cataract that affects day-to-day activities.

Early Civilizations

• It's possible that doctors in India first developed a way of treating cataracts surgically. Before them, ancient civilizations treated the problem with strange concoctions and eye drops, according to the Pacific Cataract and Laser Institute. Some believe that the Egyptians and Babylonians also had knowledge of a surgical procedure, while others find that doubtful.

Primitive Surgery

• The most primitive form of surgery for cataracts was known as "couching." The method involved depressing the clouded lens to the bottom of the eye using a very sharp but not-so-thin needle. If the cataract did not stay after being pushed down, they would slice it into tiny fragments that would stay depressed.

Alexandrians

• Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a Greek writer in the second century, authored the first authentic written document on cataract pathology and treatment. According to Mrcophth.com, this shows that the advanced method was originated in the famous Alexandrian school of medicine, but whether the technique was acquired from India is unclear.

Modern Development

• American surgeon Charles Kelman developed the ultrasound technology that revolutionized cataract surgery by using a tiny vibrating probe to break up the cataract and gently wash it away. This, along with the adaptation of Plexiglas from fighter planes into a light lens that could be implanted in the eye, has come to be the simple and relatively safe cataract surgery we know today.