Eyesight, and how to care for it / edited by George Black.

Date:: [1888]

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eyesight, and how to care for it / edited by George Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

59/168 (page 55)

SO at once, and in all cases it is prudent to take pre- cautions against communicating the disease by allow- ing the smallest particle of the matter to come in contact with a healthy eye. It often prevails in an epidemic form in the spring, when frequent and ex- treme changes in temperature and prolonged damp- ness predispose to affections of the mucous membranes, and the eyes are irritated by wind and dust. Purulent Ophthahnia differs from the preceding form principally in degree, and it is sometimes difficult to draw the line where one ends and the other begins. The discharge, which is thick and yellowish, and, in bad cases, very copious, is undoubtedly and viru- lently contagious. Whole families are sometimes inoculated by the discharge from the eyes of an in- fant who has had the disease so slightly as scarcely to attract attention. It is not common among adults who live in clean and roomy homes with comfortable surroundings, but is met with often enough in very young infants to be considered one of their special diseases. It is most frequent where a number of people are crowded together, as in barracks, asylums, charity-schools, etc. Some of the most frightful epi- demics formerly occurred on slave-ships. It is sometimes called Egyptian ophthalmia, from its great frequency in Egypt, where it prevails to such an extent as to assume the proportions of a national scourge, and the number and wretchedness of its vie-