Trachoma / by J. Boldt ; translated by J. Herbert Parsons and Thos. Snowball with an introductory chapter by E. Treacher Collins.

  • Boldt, J.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Trachoma / by J. Boldt ; translated by J. Herbert Parsons and Thos. Snowball with an introductory chapter by E. Treacher Collins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    116/292 (page 60)
    Germany 85, in Erance 84, in Belgium 81, in Italy 75, and in Holland 44. As to the cause of blindness in Spain, Carreras finds that in 1,000 cases 91 are due to Trachoma, 56 to ophthalmia neonatorum, and 43 to smallpox. George Camuset, the Erench ophthalmologist, gives an interesting account, published in the Annates d' Oculistique, 1874 : The amount of eye disease seen immediately on setting foot in Spain is appalling. Through the absolute carelessness of the people, diseases of the eye are allowed to attain proportions quite unknown in France. Blind fatalism makes them suffer with indifference. The majority simply invoke the aid of St. Lucia, whose altar in every church is covered with votive offerings. The lack of ophthalmic surgeons has contributed greatly to keeping up this deplorable state of affairs. The streets of the large cities are simply besieged with blind people, who beg in groups of five or six, and roll their shrunken eyes in their sockets. The vast majority of these cases are due to ophthalmia neonatorum or to Trachoma. I have, when passing, examined every blind person, and in over 300 I have found only three or four cases of amaurosis due to disease of deeper parts of the eye. Even so recently as 1898 the instruction in ophthalmo- logy throughout Spain was at its lowest ebb.1 There was no professor of ophthalmology, nor any ophthalmic hospital belonging to the state or municipality. There were only eye wards in the public hospitals, or small private eye hospitals. The streets swarm with blind beggars, the numbers increasing as one travels farther south. In Andalusia the condition of the people is very little better than on the north coast of Africa—e.g. in Tangier or Tunis. Hirschberg1 bases the following statement as to the distribution of Trachoma in Spain upon the statistics of Carreras Arago (Barcelona), Menacho (Barcelona), and Osio (Madrid). The northern parts are either slightly or moderately affected. In the total number of eye patients 1 Hirschberg, Zentralblatt f. prakt. Augenheilkunde 1898, S. 315 ff.