Cataract Couching

Cataract couching, known simply as couching, is the earliest documented form of cataract surgery. It works by dislodging the clouded lens of the eye so that it no longer blocks vision, though this leaves the eye without a lens, a condition called aphakia. The earliest reference to the procedure appears in the Code of Hammurabi, and it was later described in the Roman encyclopedia De Medicina and in the Indian medical treatise Sushruta Samhita, and it was practiced across China, Europe, and Africa. Couching fell out of favor after the development of modern cataract extraction surgery in the eighteenth century, but it is still practiced in parts of Asia and Africa today, generally with far poorer outcomes than modern surgery.