Surely the threat of blindness from whatever cause, is an event faced by an ever-growing segment of our aging population. However, when the cause was cataract formation, over the centuries a definite treatment evolved and became available to help those afflicted with this problem, from couching, through crude extra-capsular Graeffe knife extraction, intra-capsular cataract surgery, and planned extra-capsular surgery, to phacoemulsification (ultrasound or laser). Doctors, therefore, recognized very early that there was one blinding condition which could be treated and in which vision could be improved. It is probably this operation that gave rise to ophthalmology as the first surgical subspecialty. In the same way that Alexander Flemming accidentally discovered the mould producing penicilinase, during the Second World War Harold Ridley identified an inert plastic monomer substance that could take the place of the human lens in the human eye, and appeared to cause no secondary side-effects. However the Ridley lens combines with the extracapsular surgery of the time, proved to be an unsatisfactory technique for the cataract patient. It was Cornelius Binkhorst from the Netherlands who proposed a more satisfactory fixation device, first to the iris pupil and then to the posterior capsule. At the same time, Peter Choyce refined the anterior chamber lens to create a stable replacement treatment the crystalline lens. This book, written and edited by two of the world's most eminent eye surgeons, traces the historical events that have brought us to what is now current thought for the present millennium.