History of the eye cataract surgery

Cataract surgery is one of the oldest surgical procedures known, first documented in the fifth century BC. The earliest method known was couching. This method involved applying pressure digitally or via a sharp needle to the cataract and dislocating it into the posterior part of the eye known as the vitreous. There was no replacement of the lens and patients were left with a large focussing error known as aphakia. There was little regard for the prevention of infection by sterilisation of instrumentation and no anaesthesia. Complications such as chronic inflammatory scarring were common and patients were often left blinded. Couching is still performed in some parts of rural Africa and Asia today.

Twelve of September

On 12 September 1897 Irene Joliot-Curie was born in Paris as the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie, who went on to become Nobel Laureates in Physics and Chemistry. She worked together with her mother to provide mobile X-ray units during World War I, resumed her studies at the university in Paris after the war, and later worked at the institute that her parents had founded. Irene Joliot-Curie awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 for the discovery of artificial radioactivity. This made the Curies the family with most Nobel laurates to date. Both children of the Irene Joliot-Curie, Helene and Pierre, are also stemmed scientists.