History
The first cornea transplant was performed in 1905 by Eduard Zirm (Olomouc Eye Clinic, now Czech Republic), making it one of the first types of transplant surgery successfully performed. Another pioneer of the operation was Ramon Castroviejo. Russian eye surgeon Vladimir Filatov's attempts at tranplanting cornea started with the first try in 1912 and were continued, gradually improving until at 6 May 1931 he successfully grafted a patient using corneal tissue from a deceased person. He widely reported of another transplant in 1936, disclosing his technique in full detail. In 1936, Castroviejo did a first transplantation in an advanced case of keratoconus, achieving significant improvement in patient's vision.
Advances in operating microscopes enabled surgeons to have a more magnified view of the surgical field, while advances in materials science enabled them to use sutures finer than a human hair.
Instrumental in the success of cornea transplants were the establishment of eye banks. These are organizations located throughout the world to coordinate the distribution of donated corneas to surgeons, as well as providing eyes for research. Some eye banks also distribute other anatomical gifts.
Read more about this topic: Corneal Transplantation
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—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“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)