[History of photosurgery of the eye]

Abstract

Survey of the development of heliocautery from Antiquity to the 18th century. In art, photocoagulatin of a human eye (in order to destruct it) is, for the first time, represented in 1817 by Hieronymus Hess of Basel. A full account is given of (a) Wilhelm Werneck's therapeutic coagulations (1835): rupturing of cataract by focussed light (sun, phosphorus); (b) Maximilian Adolf Langenbeck's "insolation" of corneal, pupillary and retinal lesions and of traumatic cataract (1859); (c) Vinzenz Czerny's coagulation experiments on the retina of various animals (1867, 1882). J. Morón-Salas was the first to try photocoagulation of retinal tears (1946), but the actual initiator of modern ophthalmic photocoagulation therapy is Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath (1949).