ABSTRACT
The first suggestion of a disease associated with a rise in intraocular pressure (IOP) and thus corresponding to what is now known as glaucoma seems to occur in the Arabian writings of Shams-ad-Deen of Cairo, the 13th century Egyptian ophthalmologist, who described a ‘headache of the pupil, an illness associated with pain in the eye, hemicrania and dullness of the humours, and followed by dilatation of the pupil and cataract; if it becomes chronic, tenseness of the eye and blindness supervened’. Ever since, the mainstay of glaucoma therapy remained a battle to lower IOP, medically or surgically.
