Not so back in the day, oh, maybe 2500 years ago. As the American Academy of Ophthalmology recounts, the earliest form of cataract surgery was couching, a procedure described in 5th century B.C. Sanskrit manuscripts.
This involved displacing the lens away from the pupil and into the vitreous cavity. Centuries later discission, or needling to break up the cataract into pieces, was practiced. In the mid-1700's Jacques Daviel of France and Samuel Sharp of London began surgically removing the lenses from their patients with "the services of a strong assistant...to hold the patient's head still." Local anesthetic drops would not ease the pain and terror of the procedure until 1884.
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