Open Question
Indian tradition credits the physician Sushruta with the earliest description of couching, but neither the authorship nor the exact date of the underlying Sushruta Samhita can be established with certainty; the earliest surviving explicit Greek written account is attributed to the philosopher Chrysippus of Soli (circa 279 to 206 BCE). A modern historical review concludes it is impossible to say which nation, or which individual, first performed a cataract operation.
What would resolve this A securely dated manuscript or archaeological find fixing the Sushruta Samhita composition to a specific era relative to Chrysippus, or a specialist historiographical consensus resolving the priority question.
OpenMedical HistoryAnnals of Translational Medicine: The History of Cataract Surgery
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