History

I hope you are paying attention at the back! I’m Peds and I’m going to tell you about how people in the past used to have the eyesight cured. People have been trying to cure illnesses of the eyes for longer than you might think. The Ancient Egyptians knew about a lot of different eye diseases and they even had their own medicines for them. Unfortunately, their potions didn’t usually work – not surprising really, since they often contained lizard’s blood or even crocodile dung! - Yuck, I don’t fancy having to drink that!

Back in those days, people didn’t know about bacteria or viruses, so they thought that diseases were caused by evil spirits. It was a man in Ancient Greece called Hippocrates (hi-po-cra-tees) who first treated illnesses as things to be studied and understood. Once people realised that medicine need not be a mystery, they began to learn much more about the way the body works and how illnesses can be cured.

The knowledge of the Ancient Greeks was passed on to the Romans and then the Arabs, who made discoveries of their own about the eyes. Yet it was not until the 16th and 17th centuries that people really started to understand how the eye works. A huge step forward was made in the 1800s, when the ophthalmoscope was invented. This is like a microscope that helps doctors to look right inside the eye.

Nowadays, doctors and surgeons can do things that were impossible just a few years ago. Microsurgery, ultrasound and laser treatment have turned the study and treatment of the eye and its illnesses upside down, and more incredible inventions look likely in the future.