This chapter starts with a short history of eye care through the centuries, then discusses the eye care professionals of today – from oculists to ophthalmologists, what they do and the equipment they use. It will cover both mainstream eye care and alternative therapies.

Historical eyes: eye care throughout history

Clearly our eyes are most important to our well-being and survival so it comes as no surprise that most of us consider vision to be the most important of the senses and have an utter dread of anything going wrong with our sight. This is the case now and it has been the case throughout most of recorded history. In many cultures the eye doctor, once called an oculist and now called an ophthalmologist, has had a prestigious place in society and has been treated with a special kind of reverence. The reverence has been earned by saving sight. Often in the past that precious commodity has been squandered through quackery and ignorance, but ophthalmology also has thousands of years of spectacular successes. After all there is nothing more effective in a doctor's repertoire than to restore some sight to a blind cataract patient by a relatively simple needling procedure.

China and India

The first eye specialists or oculists were associated with the relatively sophisticated civilizations of ancient China. Unfortunately little is known of their techniques, treatments or surgery. It is known only that the healers were treated with great respect and applied a mixture of approaches including faith healing, demonology, herbalism and very sophisticated forms of acupuncture.

The eye surgeons of ancient India no doubt took much of their learning from China, but also made great advances in their own right, particularly in the surgical treatment of cataract. Cataract was (and still is) rampant in the Indian subcontinent and the early operation of couching was refined there. This involved using a lancet or needle to push the opaque, cataractous lens out of the visual plane.

Babylon

Eye specialists were prominent in the Sumerian Empire and, as with other types of doctor during the period, their treatments relied on appeasing the gods, hocus-pocus, herbal medicine and some surgery. Sumeria gave way to other empires in the same region, culminating in Babylonia.