A series of four cases of infantile gangrene of the cornea in which the Treponema pallidum was found / by Sydney Stephenson.

  • Stephenson, Sydney, 1862-1923.
Date:
[1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A series of four cases of infantile gangrene of the cornea in which the Treponema pallidum was found / 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.

    3/8
    _l \ * i ]; . ) jam 08 '= -+S-3+- / \ A SERIES OF FOUR CASES OF INFANTILE gangrene of the cornea in which THE TREPONEMA PALLIDUM WAS FOUND. It is singular that although the treponema pallidum has been found in syphilitic lesions in almost every part of the body yet specific ailments of the eye appear to form almost an exception to the rule. At all events, few reports are to be found in literature concerning the treponema in those diseases, which are amongst the commonest affecting the eye. This paucity, however, is more apparent than real. It is due partly to the inaccessibility of the lesions, involving, as they mostly do, the deeper parts of the eye, and partly to the fact that ocular pathology has become almost as much a specialty as ophthalmic surgery itself, with the consequence that lesions of the eye do not as a rule receive as much attention from the general pathologist as would otherwise doubtless be the case. At the same time there can be little doubt, if any, that in the eye, as elsewhere, the organism is the cause of all the so-called specific lesions with which we are clinically familiar. If we glance for a moment at what has been done in the finding of the treponema in syphilitic affections of the eye this is what we find. Putting aside experimental syphilis in the eyes of apes, rabbits, and dogs as not exactly germane to the present subject, the number of observations so far placed on record can only be characterised as remarkably few. For example, the treponema pallidum has been found in primary syphilitic sores of the eyelids by Kowalewski1 and by