We tend to think, don't we, that surgery is the property of so-called modern western medicin. Of course it is not. In the pre-columbian Americas, as in other parts of the world, serious surgery has been practiced since antiquity.
Here is what I found interesting today:
Blindness was a curable disease before the time of Cuauhtémoc's Mexico. When it was a case of curing infections, herbs with magic powers were used. When it was a cataract case (n'ixtotoliculii), surgery was performed with a huitztlahvatzin (a porcupine needle) or the spike from a pitayo fruit. This operation required the cataract to be 'mature' and demanded a highly skilled medicine-man. Until a few years ago, this operation was performed by Mixtec medicine-man in Oaxaca.
When the operation was successful, the patient was pilixtli notechca meaning, the old man with the clear sight of a child. If, on the contrary, the eye became sick and infected in a hopeless way, the nixcaxini was performed: the removal of the eye with an obsidian blade.
Augusto Orea Marin in BETWEEN WORLDS: CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN PHOTOGRAPHY (Bellow Publishing, 1990), p.89.
But I can't convince myself to go through a LESIK (spell?) operation to recover my sight...
