A HISTORY OF PRIMARY ANGLE-CLOSURE GLAUCOMA

The satisfactory control and cure of attacks of primary angle closure glaucoma spans one hundred years following von Graefe's iridectomy in 1856. Gonioscopy was required to validate the theories of shallow anterior chamber and pupillary obstruction, but the gonioscopists looked for the causes of angle closure in their own territory at the angle in the periphery of the anterior chamber and disregarded the center. General agreement of the importance of pupil block was thereby delayed for over ten years. Advances in pharmacology and the invention of laser surgery gave opthalmologists a comfortable control of a formerly distressing, blinding disease.