An eternal hunt for glaucoma

In the first issue of Graefe’s Archive from 1854, Albrecht von Graefe wrote about glaucoma. Glaucoma comes from the Greek word “glaukos,” gleaming, which was first used by Homer around 800 BCE. Since then, glaukos and glaucoma have taken on many different meanings. The terms blindness, cataract and glaucoma were used interchangeably and twisted together in incomprehensible contexts. Over 2500 years of glaucoma theories were upset by the discovery of the ophthalmoscope in 1851. The first reports of increased intraocular pressure appeared in the mid-seventeenth century, but it took over 200 years for this elevated pressure to be accepted by the ophthalmological community. The discovery of glaucoma simplex in 1861 was an important step forward. What did doctors know about glaucoma before 1850 and why did it take so long to classify glaucoma in its various categories? And why is it that we still do not know what the cause is for primary open angle glaucoma? I will try to answer some of these questions after a historical overview.