The association of blepharitis and ametropia with analysis of one hundred cases / by Ernest Clarke.

  • Ernest Clarke
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The association of blepharitis and ametropia with analysis of one hundred cases / by Ernest Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    3/8 page 3
    in both eyes (7 and 39) had inefficiency of the in- ternal recti (causing muscular asthenopia). Forty-one of the patients were anisometropic. In most of the cases the ametropia was of low degree, and out of the 96 eyes in which hypermetropic astigmatism existed, the astigmatism in 72 was not more than -5D. This is exactly as one would expect it to be ; it is just this low form of astigmatism which is most productive of asthenopia. Sex.—Thirty-five were males and sixty-five females. Age.—The average age was 17 years. Occupation.—Sixty-seven of the patients were engaged at near work during most of the day. Forty-four were school children. Vision before testing.—Eighty-seven of the patients sought advice for sore eyes and were unconscious of any defect of vision, and of these sixty-six had with one or both eyes V. = -§ or better, and fifty-two had V. = I or better. To sum up : (1) Blepharitis is essentially a disease of youth, and when we find it present in older patients it has existed since youth. (2) It is an expression of as- thenopia, the result of ametropia, which is invariably present. Just as asthenopia shows itself as headache or ocular pain in those whose nervous system is so con- stituted, so in others, especially strumous patients and those who exhibit a tendency to eczema, does asthen- opia mark its presence by blepharitis. It may be contended by some that 100 normal patients with no blepharitis would have shown the same percentage of ametropia, but this is not so. Work Dodd1 in his list of fifty people apparently normal, whose refraction was examined, gives out of the 100 eyes twenty emmetropic in the sense I use them above, i.e., 20 per cent. ' Trans. Oph. Soc, vol. xiii., p. 208.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3