Hard chancre of the eyelids and conjunctiva / by David DeBeck.

  • DeBeck, David.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hard chancre of the eyelids and conjunctiva / by David DeBeck. 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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    enter my mind. I took notes and made a drawing (PI. Fig. ]); pre- scribed for him a salve of the yellow oxide of mercury in vaseline (gr. v. to § ssi very thoroughly rubbed up) and instructed him to come regularly for observation. In a day or two I heard that he had ob- tained employment which took him out of the city, and I did not see him again. In the summer of 1884 he called upon me in private (he now being in comfortable circumstances). His blepharitis had continued off and on during the interval. I found him ametropic, and prescribed glasses to correct a compound hypermetropic astigmatism. I found at the site of the old ulcer a white, linear cicatrix, about 3 mm. in length. I found his family physician to be a young colleague, and a mutual intimate friend (we had all threebeen school-boys together) and called upon him. I found that about five or six weeks after the first visit above recorded, he had attended this man's wife in confinement. This child is still living, fine and healthy. About one to two weeks after this, he found that this man presented a typical roseola; later buccal and pharyngeal mucous patches developed; there followed general glandular enlargement, etc., in fact most typical secondary symptoms. He remembered the case so well from the impress it had made upon him owing to his utter inability to find any trace of the initial lesion. The man denied most emphatically any opportunity for infection, and he had examined his mucous surfaces most carefully, even using a lens, and failed to find any sign of cicatrix or induration. His conjunc- tiva he did not think of, for hehad been using the salve regularly, and his lids never looked better. This confrontation of physicians cleared up the matter. The man took mercury regularly and conscientiously for an entire year, and no symptoms have since appeared. A child born in 1883 however, was weak and puny, had unquestionably congenital syphilis, and died when a few months old. A child born in the fall of 1885 seems perfectly healthy to date. Inquiring as to possible sources of infection I found that at the time of his first visit, this man, although down in the world, had on his hands an invalid brother with a wife and child, and a young, shiftless brother of his wife's. The only way in his humble quarters to dispose of this cro» d for the night was by putting the two women in one bed, and packing the three men in another, (and '81 was a scorching sum- mer too) I found from other perfectly reliable sources that this young brother-in-law, at that time, was suffering from severe pronounced secondary symptoms. This was the only probable source of moculaticm found.