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SCIENCE PROGRESS 



It is therefore particularly liable to follow after operative 

 procedure, whilst the presence of a foreign body particularly 

 favours the onset of this condition. Hence the grave danger 

 constituted by the presence of a foreign body in the eye. The 

 position of the injury is also of importance in this connection. 

 A perforation of the globe in the region of the ciliary body is 

 most liable to be followed by sympathetic ophthalmia in the 

 opposite eye, and this liability is greatly enhanced where the 

 ciliary body prolapses in the wound. Usually a period of a few 

 weeks must elapse before the sympathetic ophthalmia develops, 

 but it may then occur at any subsequent period, having been 

 observed as long as forty years after the receipt of the injury 

 in the first eye. Hence, an eye which has once been destroyed 

 by injury remains for the rest of life a menace to the other 

 eye. 



The relationship of infection to this disease, and the powers 

 of transmission of the disease from the injured to the sound 

 eye, have not yet been definitely determined. Where, on the 

 one hand, the perforating injury and its sequelae run a perfectly 

 aseptic course, and, on the other hand, when frank suppuration 

 occurs sympathetic inflammation does not result. Animal 

 experimentation has failed to shed any light on the transmission 

 of this disease, since it never occurs spontaneously in animals, 

 and no attempts to produce it experimentally in animals have 

 been successful. Hence the importance of Browning's dis- 

 covery of the large hyaline leucocytosis associated with sympa- 

 thetic ophthalmia. The following differential counts which I 

 have obtained in some cases of sympathetic ophthalmia fully 

 confirm Browning's observation (Table V). 



Table V. — Showing the Large Hyaline Leucocytosis in Sympathetic 



Ophthalmia 



The value of intravenous injections of the organic compounds 

 of arsenic such as salvarsan and its substitutes has long been 

 known in certain protozoal infections. The similarity of the 

 blood picture in sympathetic ophthalmia and in protozoal 

 infections led Browning to suggest that cases of sympathetic 

 ophthalmia should also be treated in this way. Strikingly 



