The end of cataract couching: controversies around the decline, resurgence, and demise of a surgical practice in early modern and modern France

This article examines the controversies around the surgical treatment of cataract in France during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By analysing the various phases that led to the abandonment of the traditional technique of couching the crystalline lens and to the adoption of crystalline extraction, this paper argues that the shift away from the traditional method was driven not mainly by the superiority of the new technique, but rather by its association with the emancipation of surgery from medicine in the eighteenth century, and the recognition of ophthalmology as a medical specialty in the following century.