[The history of glaucoma]

Abstract

Glaucoma has been known in medicine since Antiquity. Hippokrates described "glaykoseis" as blindness which occurs in the elderly. The English ophthalmologist Banister was the first to establish the connection between increased tension of the eyeball and glaucoma. The important invention of the ophthalmoscope by von Helmholtz (1850) made it possible to diagnose glaucomatous changes in the fundus. In 1862, Donders discovered that high intraocular pressure caused blindness and called the disease "Glaukoma simplex." Further progress in the diagnosis of glaucoma was made by the invention of the tonometer and the perimeter, and the use of cocain. The first effective surgical treatment of glaucoma, an iridectomy, was carried out by von Graefe in 1856. Drug treatment started in 1875 with the discovery of pilocarpine.