Raiders of the lost ophthalmic ark

The great ophthalmologists are not just surgeons. They are like the Arctic explorers and adventurers of old who went boldly where no man or woman had ever gone before. They had an insatiable thirst for knowledge which laid the benchmark and foundations of modern ophthalmology as we know it. But let's digress for a moment. Some of you old enough to remember may remember the old Buggles hit “Video Killed The Radio Star” which lamented the demise of radio in the new video age. The song, recorded in 1979, had a catchy chorus with a bittersweet message: “Video killed the radio star Video killed the radio star In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone too far Pictures came and broke your heart Put down the blame on VCR” As Wikipedia notes, although the origin of music videos dates back to the 1920s, they came into prominence in the 1980s when MTV based their format around the medium The first pop music video aired on MTV (Music Television) was, yes, "Video Killed The Radio Star" and the rest is pop music history. So, what about the first ever ophthalmology video? This year, ESCRS launched a new online museum which shows historic videos from some of the great innovators in the field. The videos, which are submitted by ophthalmologists are studied, verified and curated by Dr Richard Packard and Andrzej Grzybowski and date back to the 1930s. The videos are featured on the ESCRS player at http://player.escrs.org/category/online-muesum The online museum includes a treasure trove of material including the first LASIK procedure in 1990 by Prof. Ioannis Pallikaris, a video of the logbook from 1949 showing a summary of Sir Harold Ridley’s operations from 1949 and 1950 and a fascinating video from Prof. H.J.M. Weve showing an Intra-Capsular Extraction in late 1930s. We have lot more material which is being reviewed by our curators and we plan to publish these online in the coming months. Like all museums we are always on the look out for rare artefacts and maybe some day we will find the first ever ophthalmological video. We cannot publish every video but we will do our best. All videos that we receive and publish will be fully credited, downloaded by users and the originals returned to their authors. So submit your videos to museum@escrs.org and maybe some day you too will be standing on the shoulders of giants.

Tags: training, video