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 occurs in the Arabian writings of Shamsad-Deen of Cairo, thirteenth century Egyptian ophthalmologist; he 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 then, the mainstay of glaucoma therapy has been to lower IOP, medically or surgically.
