FROM THE etiologic point of view, primary glaucoma continues to be one of the major enigmas of ophthalmology. One method of attacking the problem of etiology is to sift this disease complex for hidden, specific entities which render the ocular hypertension classifiable, in some cases, as secondary glaucoma. Work in this direction by Lindberg, in 1917, defined and separated the entity of glaucoma capsulare. Similarly, Ida Mann, in 1933, identified hyaline membranes of the anterior chamber, and subsequent studies by Reese and others removed this disease from the group of idiopathic glaucomas. Analogous efforts in the field of essential hypertension have removed the pheochromocytoma from that disease complex.
The purpose of this investigation is to search for possible faults in the general capillary mechanism which may be responsible for some cases of so-called primary glaucoma. Various, and often vague, concepts of a vascular genesis of glaucoma are nearly as old