Editor's comment. Native tribes on the Calabar coast of West Africa (now Nigeria) coerced suspects on trial for witchcraft to eat the ordeal bean of Calabar. They called the active constituent, which produced intense vomiting, sweating and convulsions, Ludwig Laqueur, 101 years ago, successfully treated his own attack of acute angle closure glaucoma with topical eserine. After using the drug to treat a few patients with chronic open angle glaucoma, he recommended administering it all cases of glaucoma simplex.., as iridectomy in this group is almost valueless (Zentralbl Med Wissensch 14:421, 1876). In controlled studies, W. C. Posey demonstrated the ability of miotics to abort glaucoma's visually damaging progress, especially if treatment were begun early, leading a colleague to suggest that patients with glaucoma use miotics in and day out to the end of life. (Arch Ophthalmol 24:378, 1895). By the mid-Twentieth Century, ophthalmologists frequently prescribed prophylactic miotics (ordeal drops?) to prevent optic nerve damage from elevated intraocular pressure, a practice now suspect, since only a small percentage of these patients, left untreated, develop visual field loss. In this pair of articles, Drs. Anderson and Hoskins present their opinions on the management of patients with ocular hypertension and normal visual fields, not simplistically (give 'era drops versus follow their fields), but in terms of the risk factors which predispose optic nerve damage. Each offers practical therapeutic recommendations. (Surv Ophthalmol 21:479-493, 1977)