The termsglaucomaandcataractin the ancient Greek and Byzantine writers

✍ Scribed by J. Fronimopoulos; J. Lascaratos

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 375 KB
• Volume: 77
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0012-4486
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00156977

✦ Synopsis

The authors deal with the meaning of the terms glaucosis and hypochyma, in the texts of ancient Greek and Byzantine medical writers. The analysis of these texts shows us that the meanings of these terms do not correspond to the modern ones. In the texts the term glaucosis corresponds to the modern cataract, and the term hypochyma to the pathological formation of a kind of membrane which appears in the space of the pupil, due to coagulation of a fluid.

It is well known that many contemporary medical terms have been preserved exactly as they were referred to in the books of the ancient Greek and Byzantine writers. However, it is less well known that these terms very often do not represent today the same pathological entity as in ancient times. Based on these ideas, we started a search for two ophthalmic diseases, glaucoma (yAO~KO)tXO~) and cataract (K~'appd~K'r~) in the ancient Greek and Byzantine writings.