The Waterbury Democrat., 1932-06-07
THE SMITH INDIAN CATARACT
 OPERATION

| Col Henry smith, famous opthalmic surgeon,
 had performed 35,O0O cataract operations on
 his patients in India up to the beginning oi | the World war. He has taught his melhoo l to hundreds of the worlds leading surgeons,
 who attend his clinic to learn the technic ol | his method. Here and there progressive spe- cialist in this country follows the smith me thod in operating cataract but the majority
 of oculists still use the older method.
 | Far be it from me to criticise the method | of any man who can do anything at all 10 | give cataract sufferers better sight. What ! | don't know about eyes fills vast libraries ana
 maybe occupies deskroom in the rear or the l village jewelry store. But know a nttie apout | tonsils yaricose veins and hernias, ana what | know about these things and their treatment | leads me to suspect that our eye pnysiciah,s m, 1 are holding back on the Smith method mainly | because they have not had the opportunity to see it in the hands of a master and to re- ceive instruction from such teacher. AL any rate that is the reason why many or the oid timers have held back on the modern methods | of treating infected tonsls, varicose veins ana hernias . :. the usual practice has been to wait for com
 plete "ripenng' of the cataract, whicn means complete opacity of the lens and almost help less blindness and then to extract the ieh'
 usually in two operations.
 In the Smith indian operation 1t is not ne- cessary to wait for ripening-thc most sue cessful results are obtained when the opera ton is done early, just as soon as the patieht Is unable to read his newspaper or do other close work. Incidentally the patient IS Tn bet
 
 done earlier. Moreover the Smith method IS comparatively simple and is complete In one sitting. One of the leading opponents of the smith Indian cataract operation in this country IS Dr w. A. Fisher of the Chicago Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat college, who makes his students do the operation on eyes from slaughtered an- mals He remarked that If an apprentice mas to give a thousand slaves to qualify as par
 ber a man contemplating such an operation AS
 cataract excision should first try 1t on rev
 bushels of animals eyes. In 1913 Dr Fisher performed 575 intracapsular cataract opera tions in Smiths clinic in India, with only pus infections He says there is even less chance of pus infection complicating the operation Tn this country because eyes are surgically cleaner here.
 Cataract is probably less prevalent now than 1t was formerly in America, per thousand pop ulaton. Better lighting of work. better care of the eyes and better fitting of glasses, and perhaps better food and better care of general health are the reasons for this. In India catar- act is exceedingly prevalent, probably for the lack of all these advantages. If there IS any special cause operative there but not here, the optham ologists do not tell us what 1t is.
 San Francisco eye surgeons (Drs A. $. and L. D. Green) find that patients have better vision after the Smith operation than they do after the ordinary operation and conclude that it is the ideal method for the removal of cat aract.