RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 415 



finiteness to some of our ideas regarding pathology. In the way of 

 contributions to exact knowledge of the processes of exudation and 

 resolution that attend inflammation, and of advanced knowledge 

 of vascular and nerve lesions, much must be credited to ophthalmo- 

 logy. Yet the opportunity it affords for the study of pathology, 

 experimentally or clinically, has thus far been utilized by few, and 

 along comparatively narrow lines. 



General Medicine. Ophthalmology has the closest relations with 

 all other departments of medical and surgical science. The general 

 tissues which make up the body at large also enter into the eye and 

 its immediate surroundings. They are here liable to the same morbid 

 changes, and in some measure require the same applications of 

 therapeutic forces. The infections, acute or chronic, have their 

 characteristic ocular manifestations. The degenerations may here be 

 traced, many of them with more minuteness and from an earlier 

 stage than is possible in any other organ. It would be easy to spend 

 time in outlining these relations of ophthalmology which have been 

 the subject of treatises on the eye in relation to general diseases. 

 But it was the " Father of Medicine " who pointed out, " art is long 

 and time is fleeting." Omitting any such general survey of matters 

 which have already claimed considerable attention, let us trace, as 

 equally instructive examples, a few of the newer or less commonly 

 noted relations of ophthalmology. 



Bacteriology. Great interest attaches to observations that have 

 been made in the region common to bacteriology and ophthalmo- 

 logy. The pathogenic action of microorganisms can nowhere else 

 in the human body be so readily, directly, and continuously studied. 

 Already the known bacterial flora of the eye, both normal and path- 

 ologic, is a large one; and the characteristics and relationships of 

 some of the organisms found there have been quite widely observed 

 and commented upon. Valuable studies of the actions of bacterial 

 toxins upon the living tissues of the eye have been made by Morax 

 of Paris, and Randolph of Baltimore. But their observations are so 

 far from being conclusive that they call for additional investigations 

 to reconcile them. 



The identity or non-identity of certain related forms, as the diph- 

 theria and the xerosis bacilli, are of equal interest and importance to 

 students of both sciences. The observation that the same clinical 

 types of inflammation may be associated with the presence or unusual 

 abundance of totally different forms of bacteria, as the pyogenic 

 staphylococcus, pneumococcus, diplobacillus and xerosis bacillus, 

 has been made by many different workers in this field. It raises the 

 questions, what is the essential relation of these organisms to the 

 inflammatory process, and is that relation necessary or merely 

 accidental? 



