The direct responsibility a surgeon incurs when undertaking an operation was evident as early as the 14 ^th Century in the tale of the blindness of King John of Bohemia. A French surgeon was summoned and attempted to couch a cataract in the king’s left eye. When the eye remained blind, the hapless surgeon was tied up in a sack and dropped into the river. A Muslim surgeon was thereupon called in to operate on the right eye where some small degree of vision remained. This surgeon with foresight obtained a safe-conduct from the king before coming to his court, so that when surgery made vision even worse he escaped drowning. The king then went to France where he was seen by the famous surgeon, Guy de Chauliac. Although de Chauliac was quite familiar with couching, describing his technique in great detail, he decided to treat the king conservatively with diet and drugs, remarking “Do not be overconfident about treating cataracts, because medicines do little good and the use of the needle is really treacherous.” The king’s blindness was helped not a bit, but de Chauliac was alive and well enough a quarter-century later to describe the case in his surgical text of 1373.

REFERENCE

McVaugh, M: Cataracts and hernias: aspects of surgical practice in the fourteenth century. Medical History. 2001. 45:319-340.

Submitted by Ron Fishman from the Cogan Ophthalmic History Society