Ophthalmia neonatorum / by Sydney Stephenson.

  • Stephenson, Sydney, 1862-1923.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ophthalmia neonatorum / by Sydney Stephenson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    inoculating an agar tube, or indeed any of the common media, with pus from the eye, since a growth of the micrococcus catarrhalis would be obtained, even at the room temperature. The last proviso is important, for although the gonococcus will not ordinarily grow upon agar, yet if enough pus is carried over from the inflamed eye, a growth of the organism may be obtained, but only at incubation temperature (37° C.). A much more likely source of confusion would be with the meningococcus (Weichselbaum), if this had ever been known to occur in a case of ophthalmia neonatorum. The organism, however, has been found in conjunctivitis in older children by Frankel, Hugland, Koplik, Dorland Smith, Gabrielides, L. S. Thomson, G. C. Robinson, and others. No mere examination of cover-glass preparations will serve to distin- tinguish the meningococcus from the gonococcus. The differential diagnosis calls for agglutination or fermentation tests. Of recent years, some attention has been paid to the occurrence of so-called 11 chlamydozoa ” in cases of ophthalmia neonatorum. These epithelial inclusions were originally de- scribed by v. Prowazek and Halberstaedter12 in 1907, as present in cases of trachoma. They had enjoyed many opportunities of seeing this disease in Java, whither they had gone, ini the entourage of Professor Neisser, for the purpose of studying syphilis experimentally in apes. They were named “ trachoma-bodies, by Greeff, of Berlin, shortly after. These bodies were found (1909) by Heymann in four cases of gonococcal ophthalmia neonatorum, and by Lindner in cases of non-gonococcal ophthalmia.1 Heymann also dis- covered the inclusions in the urethral epithelium of the mother of one of the babies with inclusion ophthalmia. Lindner set up inflammation by inoculating apes with secretion from cases in which these bodies had been demonstrated. The period of incubation was found to range from 4 to 11 days, and the inclusion bodies were present in the inoculated mucous membrane. By the inoculation method, Lindner, Fritsch, and Hofstatter 1 Stargardt was actually the first to describe the “chlamydozoa” in a case of ophthalmia neonatorum (Versamml. d. Ophth. Ges., Heidelberg, 1908), and the observation was confirmed by Schmeichler.