General Anaesthesia in Cataract Surgery

The use of the general aneasthesia in ophthalmology began very early in 1847. In that year Prett used ether as anesthetic for the extraction of a cataract. In 1850 Jungken used chloroform for the same purpose. Stoeber in 1860 and Welker in 1866 report the use of general anaesthesia by inhalation of ether fumes in eye operations. However, while the popularity of general anaesthesia in various branches of surgery was steadily increasing, in the ocular field an event occurred which seemed to decree its final abandonment: this was the discovery by Koller in 1884 of the corneo-conjuctival analgesic properties of cocaine solutions.