Preventable blindness : an account of the disease known as ophthalmia of the new-born, and of its effects; with a plea for its suppression / by N. Bishop Harman.

  • Harman, N. Bishop (Nathaniel Bishop), 1869-
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Preventable blindness : an account of the disease known as ophthalmia of the new-born, and of its effects; with a plea for its suppression / by N. Bishop Harman. 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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    alarmed sufficiently early by what they consider as merely a little matter running from the eye, and but too often it happens that medical practitioners are also betrayed into the false supposition that there is nothing dangerous in the complaint till the corneae burst and the eyes are for ever destroyed.' Yet even after such a clear exposition of the liabilities of infants to infection, accidental or maternal, Stellwag, in 1867, referring to Mac- kenzie's views on infection from the vagina, writes : ' This is certainly not a very frequent cause of purulent ophthalmia. The eyes of the child are closed during parturition, and sealed with fatty material, hence inoculation is scarcely possible/ Wanting a specific infecting cause, the diffi- culties of our forefathers must have been immense, and the difficulties make such ob- servations as those of Mackenzie the more admirable. The completeness of the clinical entity was only obtained by the discovery of the micro- coccus of gonorrhoea by Neisser in 1879, and the determination that, by all the tests that could be applied by the microscope and by selective staining, the organism found in the