Could Medieval Islamic Oculists Remove Cataracts? The views of a fourteenth-century Egyptian sceptic

As early as the ninth century CE, Arabic ophthalmological treatises described surgical procedures for treating cataracts. Most commonly the technique described was the ancient technique known to classical antiquity and today called, in English, «couching» (Arabic qadḥ), in which the cataract (the opaque lens) was pushed to one side. However, occasional mention was made of the extraction of a cataract by suction through a hollow needle. This study reviews the evidence for the practice of couching of cataracts as well as for their extraction, concluding with a translation and edition of the very sceptical report on cataract removal written by the eighth/fourteenth-century Egyptian oculist and scholar Ṣadaqa ibn Ibrāhim al-Shādhilī.