Medicine: Cortin for Glaucoma

A dreadful word among doctors is glaucoma, hardening of the eyeballs. Salt and water in the blood seep out of the blood vessels of the eye and into the eye’s cavity. Because this salty liquid cannot escape, it jams the retina against the wall of the eye, slowly destroys the tasseled end of the optic nerve. Vision dims, blindness ensues. Drugs have proved of little help; surgery gives only temporary relief.

Last week Dr. Emanuel M. (for euphony) Josephson, Manhattan eye & ear specialist, announced in Science that he had at last ascertained the true cause of glaucoma and could cure it with a drug.

The cause, he declared, was derangement of the adrenal glands. Those glands, situated one above each kidney, secrete two hormones—adrenalin in the cores, cortin in the hulls. One of adrenalin’s effects is to draw sugar into the blood (see col. 3). The effects of cortin, a scarcer substance, are less well known. Among such effects is control of the amount of salt and water in the blood. Scarcity of cortin in the system increases the permeability of the walls of blood vessels and capillaries, permits a leakage of salty fluid from the blood.

Such leakage occurs in glaucomatous eyes. Dr. Josephson reasoned, probably because the patient’s adrenals supply too little cortin. He bought some cortin at a drugstore, injected it into the muscles of glaucomatous patients. Usually within half an hour eye pressure dropped to normal, tension and pain in the eyeballs ceased and many purblind patients could see clearly for the first time in years. Pursuing a hypothesis, Dr. Josephson gave cortin to nearsighted children. In most cases their vision also promptly improved. That must mean, he decided, that myopia and glaucoma are due to the same thing.