School ophthalmia : a paper read before the association on February 25th, 1897 / by Sydney Stephenson.

  • Stephenson, Sydney, 1862-1923.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: School ophthalmia : a paper read before the association on February 25th, 1897 / by Sydney Stephenson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    musi needs be dislocated. In the poorer schools, particularly the parochial, the effects are even more serious. There large sums of money may have to be expended before the pest can be stamped out; the education of affected children may be brought to a standstill for many months together; sight may be damaged; and, last but not least, the victims of the epidemic may be handicapped by the disease for years after they have passed into the outside world. Their economic value is in this way reduced, while there is the ever-present risk that they may communicate their malady to those about them. The question of ophthalmia and its prevention in parochial schools, therefore, involves interests of the widest possible kind. So important, indeed, is the matter now deemed by the Local Government Board that they have directed an inquiry into the state as regards ophthalmia of every Poor Law child in London, as a first step towards some plan for rooting out the evil. So far I have spoken of ophthalmia in a broad and general sense as meaning any inflammation of the conjunctiva. In the present paper I propose dealing with acute affections of that membrane only, as being most likely to fall under the notice of Members of this Association. From a practical point of view it is necessary to distinguish carefully between the various specific ailments, at least three in number, included under acute ophthalmia. Some of these affections are of little moment, whereas others are exactly the reverse. But they are aU distinguished by one feature^—namely, the power of becoming epidemic under certain conditions of which we cannot as yet speak with scientific exactitude. For convenience of description, they may be classified as follows :— (1) Purulent Ophthalmia. (2) Muco-purulent Ophthalmia. (3) Acute Trachoma. A brief account may next be given of the leading features of each of these three forms of acute inflammation of the conjunctiva.