Some practical aspects of conjunctival bacteriology / [Freeland Fergus].

  • Fergus, A. Freeland (Andrew Freeland), 1858-1932
Date:
[between 1900 and 1909?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some practical aspects of conjunctival bacteriology / [Freeland Fergus]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SOME PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF CONJUNCTIVAL BACTERIOLOGY. I desire to say something as to the necessity and utility of daily bacteriological work in the modern eye clinic. The science of pathology and the science of therapeutics are sisters. The problem to be solved is the treatment of disease. The object of pathology is to explain the origin of disease, and the ideal object of rational therapeutics is to apply the teachings of pathology to its cure or to its alleviation. In all its departments medicine is in many respects more of an art than a science, and probably to a large extent must remain so; but, unquestionably, recent pathological advances have done a great deal to illumine the work of the practitioner, and to bring his efforts more into line with the biological sciences. Thanks to the pathologists, we now have clearer ideas as to the nature of the many forms of inflammation of the con¬ junctiva, which in days gone by were all classed together as catarrhal ophthalmia, and were for the most part put down to exposure to cold, or to other indefinite causes. Some consi¬ derable number of years ago it came under my notice that a number of persons, who all lived in the same tenement in High Street, Glasgow, were suffering from acute catarrhal conjunctivitis. I investigated the matter at the time, and found that no fewer than forty persons were thus affected in this one tene¬ ment. It seemed to me, then, that we here had to deal with something which was epidemic, and to some extent analogous to one of the specific fevers. Some time later I read a very interesting paper by Dr. Weeks, which seemed to afford a complete explanation of such occurrences. In that paper he described his bacillus and the contagious catarrh to which it gives rise. Many changes have taken place since then, and thanks to the labours of several distinguished pathologists we now know a considerable amount about the bacteriology of the conjunc¬ tiva. Indeed, attempts have even been made to form a bacteriological classification of conjunctival diseases. No doubt the picture is not complete, for the micro-organism to which granular ophthalmia is due has not been discovered,