Eye Care

The eye, including its structure and mechanism, has fascinated scientists and the public in general since ancient times. The majority of all input to the brain comes from vision. Many of the expressions in the English language that mean to understand are equivalent vision terms. "I see", to mean I understand. Many patients when told that they may have an eye problem will be more concerned about diseases that affect vision than other, more lethal diseases. Being deprived of sight can have a devastating effect on the psyche, as well as economic and social effects, as many blind individuals require significant assistance with activities of daily living and are often unable to continue gainful employment previously held while seeing.

The maintenance of ocular health and correction of eye problems that decrease vision contribute greatly to the ability to appreciate the longer lifespan that all of medicine continues to allow. Given the importance of vision to quality of life, many ophthamologists consider their job to be rewarding, as they are often able to restore or improve a patient's sight. As detailed below, advances in diagnosis and treatment of disease, and improved surgical techniques have extended our abilities to restore vision like never before.

Sushruta wrote Sushruta Samhita in about fifth Century BCE in India. He described about 72 ocular diseases as well as several ophthalmological surgical instruments and techniques. Sushruta has been described as the first Indian cataract surgeon. [1] [2] Arab scientists are some of the earliest to have written about and drawn the anatomy of the eye—the earliest known diagram being in Hunain ibn Is-hâq's Book of the Ten Treatises on the Eye. Earlier manuscripts exist which refer to diagrams which are not known to have survived. Current knowledge of the Græco-Roman understanding of the eye is limited, as many manuscripts lacked diagrams. In fact, there are very few Græco-Roman diagrams of the eye still in existence. Thus, it is not clear to which structures the texts refer, and what purpose they were thought to have.