Brewer's: Drop Serene

(gutta serena). An old name for amaurosis. It was at one time thought that a transparent, watery humour, distilling on the optic nerve, would produce blindness without changing the appearance of the eye.

“So thick a `drop serene' hath quenched these orbs.”Milton: Paradise Lost, iii. 25.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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