By way of contrast, the cataract operations performed on Johann Sebastian Bach in 1749, after making him almost totally blind, killed him 4 months later. This quote is from the biography of Bach by Martin Geck:
"From the fall of 1749 on he must have suffered so greatly from the loss of his eyesight that at the end of March and the beginning of April he twice put himself in the hands of the English oculist John Taylor, who was visiting Leipzig at the time. " Geck then quotes from the obituary:
"Not only could he no longer use his eyes but his entire body, otherwise thoroughly sound, was completely cast into an uproar by the operation and by the administration of harmful medicines and other things, by which he was almost constantly ill for a good half year thereafter. "
A similar account is to be found in the article "The eyes of Johann Sebastian" by Zegers RH. New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 321, no. 11 (14 September 1989), pp. 765-9:
"Johann Sebastian Bach's only physical problem seems to have been his vision. Myopia seems most likely, and it is probable that he developed cataracts at an older age. In addition to the cataracts, his worsening vision may have been due in part to some other eye problem. During the last year of his life, Bach's vision became so poor that he decided to have his eyes operated on. Two operations were performed in 1750 by the traveling English eye surgeon John Taylor. Most likely the first operation was Taylor's standard couching procedure. About 1 week after the first operation, Bach had to be operated on again because of a reappearance of the cataract. Many painful and/or vision-reducing complications could have been induced by these intraocular operations: uveitis or endophthalmitis, secondary glaucoma, hemorrhage, retinal detachment, and even sympathetic ophthalmia. Bach was "completely blind" after the operations, and he died less than 4 months after the final operation."
When I read these accounts I can't but wonder: why is it that one of the greatest artists in history should have suffered so much and died from an operation that I, merely by the fact of being alive in 2009, can undergo as a form of corrective surgery with relatively low-level discomfort and no pain? Is there any way that I can connect such an unimaginable chasm between merit and fate, beyond the assumption of some utterly senseless disorder in the structure of the universe and the destiny of mankind?
Well, yes, there is, and to me this reflection is neither fatuous nor portentous. The fact that the achievement of J.S. Bach enters the mainstream of civilization at the highest level means that directly and indirectly it has contributed in a fundamental way to the motive forces in art, science and medicine that, after 260 years, have led to the development of the medical understanding and technology that constitute the miraculous phenomenon of the modern-day cataract operation.
Apart from this general overall effect on civilization, one can credit Bach directly in terms of the many doctors and scientists since his day who have been so moved and inspired by listening to his music, (and the music of the great composers that build upon his work) that they were led to dedicate their lives to difficult high-level research. Aside from this, the up-lifting of the intellectual morale of mankind through two and a half centuries of exposure to his music has created a climate of creative energy, filled with the sense of limitless possibilities given sufficient energy, enterprise and patience.
On the morning after my operation I was sitting in one the cafés where I normally have breakfast in Middletown, listening to the broadcast music that is a fixture of most restaurants everywhere: the usual mixture of insipid, loud and nauseating sounds that make up 90 percent of all canned commercial music. After about 15 minutes, I removed my Walkman tape recorder from its case, put on the headphones and, by way of celebration of the operation on myself that had turned out so badly for its composer, began playing a tape of the Bach Magnificat. The power of the opening bars almost threw me across the room! If the conventional drivel music I'd been exposed to were all that mankind is capable off, we would never been able to develop the high levels of medical science and technology that made my operation possible.
Indeed, this music was, in all respects, as far above the music floating about the restaurant, as the cataract operation of Dr. Thomas Begins done on me was above the cataract operation done on JS Bach in 1750 by John Taylor, oculist, London.