Emily Dickinson Lexicon

GLAU-CO'MA, n. [Gr.]

A fault in the eye, in which the crystaline humor becomes gray, but without injury to the sight. Quincy. A disease in the eye, in which the crystaline humor becomes of a bluish or greenish color, and its transparency is diminished. Encyc. An opacity of the vitreous humor. Hooper. According to Sharp, the glaucoma of the Greeks is the same as the cataract; and according to St. Yves and others, it is a cataract with amaurosis. Parr. Dimness or abolition of sight from opacity of the humors. J. M. Good. "Glaucoma consists in a change of structure in the vitreous humor." "Arthritic inflammation of the internal tunics of the eye, (an inflammation commencing in parts most essential to the function of vision, in the retina, in the vitreous humor, and probably involving the choroid coat,) has sometimes been called acute glaucoma, this term being derived from the greenish appearance of the eye. It has been called glaucoma from another symptom, which takes place, where, without any enlargement of the vessels, without any very severe pain or absolute extinction of vision in the first place, the pupil exhibits the same greenish discoloration, a discoloration which obviously does not depend on a change in the crystaline lens; for it is more deeply seated, – it occupies the fundus of the eye, and you can only see it by looking at it, when you are standing directly before the patient, not by looking at the eye side-ways. This is called glaucoma simply; and it appears to me to be a chronic form of the same affection as that to which the term acute glaucoma is given. This chronic form of glaucoma is important to be observed; for it is liable to be confounded with cataract." Mr. Lawrence's Lectures on Surgery.