The Indian operation of couching for cataract

Name: The Indian operation of couching for cataract
Author: Elliot, Robert Henry

Elliot, Robert Henry

Cataract -- Surgery -- India; Ophthalmology -- India -- History

The collection of fifty-four eyeballs, on which the work for my
Hunterian Lectures was founded, I have had the honour to present to
the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. I think I am justified
in claiming that it is unrivalled, and likely to remain so. At the
suggestion of Sir John Bland-Sutton, I have endeavoured so to write the
chapter on pathology that it may furnish a guide to any who care to
study the subject within the walls of that museum. At the same time, I
have striven to make it readable and of interest to those who have no
such opportunity. In this the photographs have greatly helped me.

As I have already said, I have given nearly a quarter of a century’s
intermittent work to elucidate these problems, which I felt were of
wide interest, not merely to India or to the East alone, but to the
whole civilized world. During the last two years I have devoted a
very large proportion of my spare time continuously to the subject,
but it is so immense and so far-reaching that I feel I have left much
unfinished. On every hand fresh problems open up, till there seems
no limit to what might be done, given time and opportunity. This
operation of couching, so old that its origin is lost in the dim mists
of antiquity, has still much that is new to be learnt for the seeking.
There are many of the younger surgeons in the East who could carry the
work much farther if they would, and who would be a hundred-fold repaid
if they did. Will they?

  ROBERT HENRY ELLIOT.

  54, Welbeck Street,
  Cavendish Square, W.,
  1917.

CONTENTS

  CHAPTER                                                       PAGE

    I. THE HISTORY OF COUCHING                                     1

   II. THE TECHNIQUE OF THE OPERATION                             14

  III. THE INDIAN COUCHER AND HIS HABITS                          19

   IV. STATISTICAL                                                25

    V. THE PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF COUCHED EYES                   35

   VI. DIAGNOSIS                                                  77

  VII. CLINICAL                                                   85

  INDEX                                                           92

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  FIGS. 1 AND 2. BARTISCH’S OPERATION (PLATE 1.)      _Frontispiece_

  FIG.                                                          PAGE

  3. THE STAGES OF DEPRESSION                                      8

  4. THE STAGES OF RECLINATION                                     8

  5. SCARPA’S NEEDLE AS USED BY MACKENZIE                          8

  6. THE ANTERIOR METHOD OF COUCHING                              14

  7. THE POSTERIOR METHOD OF COUCHING                             14

  8. GROUP SHOWING THE INDIAN OPERATION OF COUCHING               15

  9. THE INSTRUMENTS USED IN COUCHING IN THE SOUTH OF INDIA       17

  PLATE II.                                              FACING PAGE

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The Indian operation of couching for cataract

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