as he underwent cataract surgery. It is assumed that the couching technique was used. Couching was practised in ancient India and subsequently introduced to other countries by the Indian physician Sushruta ( 6th century BCE), who described it in his work the Compendium of Sushruta or Sushruta Samhita. The Uttaratantra section of the Compendium, chapter 17, verses 55–69, describes an operation in which a curved needle was used to push the opaque "phlegmatic matter" (kapha in Sanskrit) in the eye out of the way of vision. The phlegm was then said to be blown out of the nose. The eye would later be soaked with warm clarified butter and then bandaged. Here is a translation from the original Sanskrit: The removal of cataracts by surgery was introduced into China from India, and flourished in the Sui () and Tang dynasties (). Galen of Pergamon , a prominent Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher, performed an operation similar to modern cataract surgery. Using a needle-shaped instrument, Galen attempted to remove a cataract-affected lens. Although many 20th century historians have claimed that Galen believed the lens to be in the exact center of the eye, He actually understood that the crystalline lens is located in the anterior aspect of the human eye. The first references to cataract and its treatment in Europe are found in 29 AD in De Medicina, the work of the Latin encyclopedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus, which describes a couching operation. The removal of cataracts by couching was a common surgical procedure in Djenné, as in many other parts of Africa. Couching continued to be used throughout the Middle Ages and is still used in some parts of Africa and in Yemen. Couching is an ineffective and dangerous method of cataract therapy, and often results in patients remaining blind or with only partially restored vision. For the most part, it has been replaced by extracapsular cataract surgery, including phacoemulsification. The lens can also be removed by suction through a hollow instrument. Bronze oral suction instruments have been unearthed that seem to have been used for this method of cataract extraction during the . Such a procedure was described by the 10th-century Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, who attributed it to Antyllus, a 2nd-century Greek physician. The procedure "required a large incision in the eye, a hollow needle, and an assistant with an extraordinary lung capacity". This suction procedure was