Glaucoma historical perspective
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
Overview
Historical perspective
In the Hippocratic Aphorisms the term glaucoma was used to describe blindness in the elderly with a glazed appearance of the pupil. The implied meaning is that of a clouded or blue-green hue of the cornea in end stage forms that may result in corneal edema and/or coinciding cataract. The Hippocratic writings make no clear distinction between cataract and glaucoma. Both Classical and Alexandrian Greeks did not recognize the specific disease which we now call glaucoma. Homer's glauk-opis Athene could be a "bright-eyed" or a "greyeyed" goddess. Gk. for "owl" was glauk- from its bright, staring eyes.
The definition of glaucoma has changed drastically since its introduction around the time of Hippocrates in approximately 400 BC. The first recognition of a disease associated with a rise in intraocular pressure and thus corresponding to what is now known as glaucoma occurred in the Arabian writings, “Book of Hippocratic treatment”, of At-Tabari (10th century). In European writings, it was Richard Bannister (1622), an English oculist and author of the first book of ophthalmology in English, who recognized glaucoma as a disease with four features: increased intraocular pressure, long duration of the disease, the absence of perception of light and the presence of a fixed pupil. However, throughout the 18th century the term glaucoma was still merely a label applied to an inflamed eye wherein the pupil appeared greenish-blue and the visual prognosis was bad, but the tension of the eye was not stressed.
It was only after the careful description by Antoine-Pierre Demours (1818) that the central concept of a rise in intraocular pressure became fully established. G.J. Guthrie (1823) and William McKenzie, a Scottish clinician (1835) confirmed these findings. Donders (1862) described an incapacitating increased eye tension occurring without any inflammatory symptoms as "simple glaucoma". In 1973 Drance provided for the first time the definition of glaucoma as an optic neuropathy caused by increased intraocular pressure and other associated risk factors.
The first patient in the United States federal government's Compassionate Investigational New Drug program, Robert Randall, was afflicted with glaucoma and had successfully fought charges of marijuana cultivation because it was deemed a medical necessity (U.S. v. Randall) in 1976.[1]