Two centuries of eye care in Hawaii.

Eye care in Hawai'i has changed dramatically since 1778. The ancient Hawaiians lacked any optical aids and had only the most primitive methods of treatment for their visual problems. During the next 200 years, Island residents benefited from a succession of technical innovations and new professional skills, all introduced from abroad: spectacles, optometry, ophthalmology, contact lenses, corneal transplants, and eye banks, among others. This history, oddly, has remained largely unknown, even to leading practitioners. Native Hawaiian eye care in pre-contact times was relatively unsophisticated. The ancient kahunas, according to Gibson, "are said to have cured the frequent inflammatory conditions of the eyes of Hawaiians with an extract from the stem of the pohuehue" (beach morning-glory). Gutmanis has written that "weak eyes were treated by the placing of mother's milk in the eyes, or by blowing the chewed leaf of a Me banana or the flower of an 'ilima across the baby's eyes." Blindness (maka-po) required using the milk of a young coconut and popolo (black nightshade), followed by earnest prayer. Cataracts were treated by "gently scraping the surface of the cornea with a bit of soft kapa." In another cure for cataracts, a thick liquid made from the shoots of a grass called kukaepua'a ("hog dung") was blown into the affected part of the eye. The first optical devices seen in Hawai'i (like so many other examples of European technology) came aboard the ships of Captain James Cook in 1778 and 1779. Cook had equipped his vessels with "an Achromatic Tellescope," "a Reflecting Tellescope," and "two