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The acute form of the disease resulting from, or attending, simple ophthalmia, we have often witnessed, but the chronic form, of which we more particularly speak, is more rare. We have seen three cases of the latter, and, no doubt, might have found many more if our opportunities of studying canine pathology were equal to those of the English writers.
In the Regimental Hospital, the surgeon may be seen going from the man who has lost a finger to a fever patient, and then to one who has ophthalmia, passing on to a fellow raving in delirium tremens, next to whom is a sufferer under bronchitis, who will not be allowed to go out of doors for weeks to come; and if half a dozen are brought in with cholera in the course of the day, the officials do not know which way to turn.
There are some local affections incident to the new-born child concerning which a few words may not be out of place; and first of the =Ophthalmia of New-born Children.= It is the cause of the loss of sight of nine-tenths of all persons who, among the poor, are said to have been born blind.
Here was the true key to the Wilcannia shower; here was the under-side of my imagined precaution against ophthalmia; here was the hidden purpose of that repetitional picking and sorting of the hawker's stock which had left Jack the Shellback his Hobson's choice in coats; here was a Wesleyan converging of the whole vast order of the universe toward the happiest issue.
The presence of these foreign substances in the eye, in connection with the salt spray and irritating atmosphere, greatly aggravated the ophthalmia, and resolved it into a chronic affection, which ultimately resulted in entropium.
INFECTIOUS OPHTHALMIA OF RUMINANTS. This occurs as an acute inflammation of the eyelids and cornea. The disease is highly infectious, affecting all of the susceptible animals in the herd. It commonly occurs during the late summer and fall. The symptoms appear suddenly. The animal is feverish, the eyes closed and the cheeks are wet with tears. The cornea becomes clouded, white and opaque.
The chief trouble is chronic ophthalmia; nearly all the children are afflicted with this disease, and at the eyes of each poor helpless babe are a mass of hungry flies. The wonder is, not that ophthalmia runs amuck among these people, but rather, that any of the children escape total blindness.
As to their nasty swamps and fogs, quite good enough for such croaking fellows as they are, what could induce an Englishman to live among them, except the pleasure of killing Frenchmen, or shooting game? Deprive us of these pursuits, which the surrender of Flushing effectually did, and Walcheren, with its ophthalmia and its agues, was no longer a place for a gentleman.
But in more than thirty states the immediate reporting of infants' sore eyes is compulsory, and in thirteen states the prophylaxis is distributed free to doctors and midwives. In our own state, every precaution is taken to prevent infant ophthalmia.
Ophthalmia neonatorum is a crime, because of the suffering it brings to helpless, innocent persons, and because it leads to a reduction in economic efficiency, deprivation of many pleasures and privileges and, very often, immeasurable misery, suffering and sorrow during a lifetime in the dark."
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