Everything You Need to Know About Cataracts
When Shakespeare's King Lear calls on "cataracts" to spout during his "Blow winds, and crack your cheeks!" speech, he's not asking for cloudy vision.
In Shakespeare's day, a "cataract" also meant a huge waterfall.
This is fitting, because the clouds of white foam arising from a waterfall are metaphorically like the cloudy vision caused by a cataract.
Roughly half of everyone who lives to age 80 will eventually get cataracts in one or both eyes.
Live to age 95, like the great San Francisco poet and City Lights bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti, born March 14, 1919, and you'll have close to a 100-percent chance of getting cataracts. But that's a small price to pay for such awesome longevity.
What exactly is a cataract? To answer that question, let's begin by looking at the eye.
A cataract is a clouding of the eye's lens. On the picture, do you see where the lens is in the eye? Yes, right behind the pupil.
Light enters the eye through the pupil. As the picture shows, the lens focuses light onto the retina, which is a layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye.
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