Optical connections: Mao’s cataract mystery

When Optician’s clinical editor, Bill Harvey, tweeted from China that Chairman Mao apparently had undergone minimal eye surgery in 1975, initially it appeared that this nugget of information was somewhat of a dead end. Was the information correct? If so, what was the surgery? Was it one or both eyes? Further digging unearthed some interesting information and some odd contradictions. It also became evident that there are a number of other world leaders who have had a notable ocular history.

Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-tung) was born in 1893, at a time when China was still largely an agrarian society and traditional Chinese medicine, with its many centuries of history, held sway. One of the Chinese medical techniques was a method for treating cataract based on the ancient art of ‘couching’ that goes back at least to the Babylonians, 3,000 years ago. In order to couch a cataract the surgeon would pierce the sclera with a sharp lancet, then insert a needle to be aimed at the cataractous lens in order to dislodge it with a downward push into the vitreous cavity. The needle would be removed when the patient reported being able to see objects.