CLOSURE OF THE ANGLE OF THE ANTERIOR CHAMBER IN GLAUCOMA

Abstract

One of the most difficult endeavors in medicine is to eradicate beliefs and doctrines which, although based on insufficient or poorly supported evidence, have acquired, so to speak, a right of citizenship in science. Such has been the case with peripheral synechia and its rôle in the development of glaucoma. When Knies in 1876 and Weber in 1877 discovered the adhesion of the root of the iris to the corneoscleral limbus in sections of eyes enucleated after long-standing glaucoma, it was assumed that this was the primary cause, the origin, of all the symptoms which are characteristic of hypertension and glaucoma. According to this theory, the shutting off of the trabecula and Schlemm's canal by the iris adhesion entirely blocked the only outlet for the aqueous and produced a retention of fluids which gave rise to glaucoma. It was not of much avail that study of eyes enucleated post