History
The first references to cataract and its treatment in Ancient Rome are found in 29 CE in De Medicinae, the work of the Latin encyclopedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus. The Romans were pioneers in the health arena—particularly in the area of eye care.
Other early accounts are those in Sanskrit medical literature. Early cataract surgery was described by the Indian physician, Suśruta (fl. ca. AD 200). For a full citation translated from the original Sanskrit, see the Wikipedia entry on Cataract Surgery.
The Muslim ophthalmologist Ammar ibn Ali, in his Choice of Eye Diseases, written circa 1000 CE, wrote of his invention of a syringe and the technique of cataract extraction while experimenting with it on a patient.
Read more about this topic: Cataract
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“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)