Diphtheritic ophthalmia : a paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association at Cork, with additions / by Edward Nettleship.

  • Nettleship, Edward, 1845-1913.
Date:
[1880]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diphtheritic ophthalmia : a paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association at Cork, with additions / by Edward Nettleship. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    for a few days ; severe membranous ophthalmia; scarlet fever settiug in two or three days later, and rapidly fatal; post mortem,—soft grey pulp lining tonsils and nasal fosase, and thick membrane all over inner surface of eyelids. A scrofulous affection of the eyes had occurred in a case, by Gibert/^ of diphtheritic ophthalmia following measles; one of Magne's cases^^ began like catarrhal ophthalmia; slight ophthalmia a few days before the membranous ophthalmia, and granular lids preceding it, is noted in two others by Warlomont f severe catarrhal ophthalmia a few months before by Jabez Hogg.^^ —Again, both forms may be caused by gonorrhoea^- and by gonorrhoeal and purulent ophthalmia; each may occur in the course of ophthalmia neonatorum, and each may in turn give rise to purulent ophthalmia. Thus, Von Graefe stated that many cases of his diphtheritic ophthalmia in children of two or three years old were traceable to contagion from cases of ophthalmia neonatorum, and that the diphtheritic disease when transmitted to adults often reproduced mixed or purulent forms. Hirschberg^ gives two cases of diphtheritic ophthalmia neo- natorum. Streatfeild^^ records a case of mixed membranous and diphtheritic ophthalmia neonatorum. Lewinski'^ gives the following cases:—1. A boy, aet. 9, had diphtheritic ophthalmia of the right, and purulent of the left eye; a few days later three others in the family, set. 16, 10, and 7, all had the purulent disease, and subsequently the mother and her new-born infant got diphtheritic ophthalmia. 3. A father, set. 33, purulent of right, treated by nitrate of silver, and followed in three days by diphtheritic of left; his three children all suffering from purulent ophthalmia when his attack began.—In both forms the diphtheritic or the membranous stage is commonly followed by a stage of purulence, but ihe order of events may be reversed in both, and a few examples of each occur where no purulent stage ever comes on. Hans Adler^7 saw diphtheritic preceded by acute purulent ophthalmia in four cases. Keyser^^ records a mixed membranous and diphtheritic case in both eyes recovering without any purulent stage. Jacobson^^ saw three chronic cases of diphtheritic ophthalmia, affecting only one eye^ in children from four to six years old, passing from the first to the third (or atrophic) stage without any suppurative (or