This was the first extracapsular cataract extraction operation on record. It was a seemingly miraculous procedure: when his bandages were removed after a week of bed rest, Garion could see again. Over the next forty years, Daviel performed 206 such operations, 182 of which he claimed were successful—impressive odds for the time. After he explained his method to the Académie Royale de Chirurgie in 1753, other surgeons followed suit. Over the next century, hundreds of different medical knives were designed to try to create smoother incisions, which would speed healing and minimalize the chance of infection. Surgeons developed their own signature cuts, and ophthalmology illustrations show a variety of these marks, scarred onto the cornea like runic signs or the Utopian alphabet invented by Thomas More. In one example, the doctors’ surnames and the date of each procedure are inscribed below a circle containing their patented triangle, zigzag, anchor, square, cross, circle, or V and T slit. Together they form a secret language of eyes.