Sunday

OPHTHALMOLOGY AND SURGERY

    • Blindness was one of the leading causes of disability throughout the Islamic Empire, which is why ophthalmology was a huge emphasis
    • considerable advancement in knowledge over that in the Greco-Roman treatises preserved today
    • 9th century the physician-translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq wrote monographs on ophthalmology, including the influential Ten Treatises on the Eye
    • Untreated cataract result in blindness
    • `Ammar ibn `Ali al-Mawsili
    • He insisted he could cure a cataract by sticking in a hollow needle and sucking it out
    • Generally accepted method – Couching
    • Success rate 4/10
    • pushing the lens of the eye out of the way by inserting into the eye a needle or probe through the edge of the cornea
    • Infection and glaucoma were the major causes for failure
    • trachoma, the major cause of blindness
    • treated by averting the eyelid and scraping the interior with a selection of scrapers
    • they developed
    • Surgery
      • Surgical chapter from the 10th-century medical encyclopedia composed in Spain by al-Zahrawi.
        • Al-Zahrawi divided his discourse on surgery into three parts: on cautery, on incisions and bloodletting, and on bone setting
        • included in it copious illustrations and descriptions of instruments
        • In the 13th century, Ibn al-Quff, composed a specialized surgical manual - omitted all ophthalmologic procedures because he considered these the province of a specialist.
        • Nearly all the other general discussions of surgery did include some ophthalmologic practices, though not with the detail and thoroughness evident in the monographs devoted solely to ophthalmology.

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