Empire of the Eye: Indian oculists, British surgeons and the trans-imperial development of Victorian cataract surgery
Speaker - Kristin Hussey
Before the bombing in 1941, the Royal College of Surgeons boasted an impressive collection of eye specimens, including over a hundred globes sent from India by surgeon Robert Henry Elliot.
These eyes showed the trauma caused by couching, a method of removing cataracts used by indigenous Indian practitioners. Yet this technique was not limited to the Raj, with itinerant oculists plying their trade in the imperial metropolis of London. Kristin will discuss how we can see the eye, and eye surgery, as a unique crystallization point in medical ideas travelling from East to West and back again.