Tuesday, April 24, 2007

A 5000 year old operation?

I've just read that there is an Egyptian papyrus in Berlin that's five thousand years old, which has a description of cataract surgery. At present, I have no way of knowing whether this is true or not, but if true, it would put the origins of ophthalmic surgery four thousand years further back than was first believed.
I would so love to see this papyrus. I'm sure, given enough time and a facsimile copy, I could translate the appropriate passage to see whether they used an extracapsular approach, or the subluxation technique described in an earlier post.
How's that for a project? Combining two of my favourite subjects : hieroglyphics and ophthalmology!

2 comments:

Beach Bum said...

Discovery Channel here in the US has ran several shows on ancient surgeries and cateract surgery was one of them. A very cool show.

Bo... said...

Hey there---I just answered your question asking me abuot what paint ponies are in its own blog posting. (See if you think they're as beautiful as I do!)