ABSTRACT
The ancient Greeks and Romans did not differentiate between glaucoma and cataract. The term glaucoma in Greek was used to describe a general glazed appearance of the pupil. In the time of Hippocrates (460-377 BC) all maladies of the eye were attributed to ‘disturbed or ill humors’. The two conditions were not differentiated until the time of Celsius (25 BC-AD 50) and later Galen (AD 131-210): cataract was treatable, glaucoma was not (Ref. 1, page 380). For problems involving sight or the eye, from the second century BC various ‘magic’ eye drops were concocted containing zinc, copper, mydriatics, and other substances including albumin, saliva, mother’s milk, children’s urine, crocodile and lion bile.2
