Indian tradition credits the physician Sushruta with the earliest description of couching, but neither the authorship nor the exact date of the underlying Sushruta Samhita can be established with certainty; the earliest surviving explicit Greek written account is attributed to the philosopher Chrysippus of Soli (circa 279 to 206 BCE). A modern historical review concludes it is impossible to say which nation, or which individual, first performed a cataract operation.
What would resolve this A securely dated manuscript or archaeological find fixing the Sushruta Samhita composition to a specific era relative to Chrysippus, or a specialist historiographical consensus resolving the priority question.
OpenMedical HistoryAnnals of Translational Medicine: The History of Cataract Surgery