INTRODUCTION xiii 



student days belong to the more distant past can at least learn to 

 make a simple smear preparation and find it useful. 



While for the scientific student it would be desirable to record every 

 detail which the literature affords, for the practitioner a shorter text- 

 book seems perhaps to be sufficient. I am of the opinion that these 

 two points of view should not be separated. The practical points can 

 be emphasized, and I hope that by the plates, the illustrations from 

 secretions, and the introductory remarks to the sections, as well as 

 by the special chapters on the secretion-findings, this book may 

 serve to put a due value on clinical bacteriological differential diagnosis. 

 If our diagnosis is not to be merely schematic, it must closely follow 

 scientific thought. I hope also that the simple examination of the 

 secretions may induce many to go more fully into the subject, and 

 that in the future surgeons during their student days will pay more 

 attention to these questions. 



In the ophthalmological literature there has till now been no book 

 through which the ophthalmic surgeon can post himself up in this 

 subject. 1 



Bacteriological questions begin to be more or less thoroughly dis- 

 cussed in the ophthalmological textbooks. The subject of Conjunc- 

 tival Diseases in the second edition of Saemisch's ' Handbuch der 

 gesamten Augenheilkunde,' and also the article by Morax in the 

 ' Encyclopedie francaise d'Ophthalmologie,' published some years ago, 

 fully consider the bacteriology of conjunctival diseases. All these 

 accounts, however, require to be collected and extended. On the other 

 hand, the bacteriological textbooks treat these interesting questions 

 either very shortly or not at all, particularly as the very comprehensive 

 ophthalmological literature is only to a very small extent at their 

 disposal. 



I have laid especial importance on the illustrations, and in this I 

 am gratefully indebted to the support of my assistants, Drs. Stock, 

 Agricola, Brons, Eupprecht, and especially to the publishing house of 

 Gustave Fisher. Mr. Johnsen, an artist of great experience in this 

 kind of work, has produced the coloured plates, which are all of the 

 same magnification, and stained exclusively by Gram's method, repre- 

 senting the important findings absolutely true to nature. For this 

 purpose I have only used preparations made from ophthalmic cases ; 

 for it would not be advisable in the case of the Pneumococcus, for 



1 ' Ophthalmologie Microbienne,' Gabrielides (Constantinople, 1906), appeared when this 

 book was ready for the press. It contains the ophthalmo-bacteriological literature, mostly 

 from French reviews, but it hardly contains any illustrations, and is arranged in quite 

 another manner. 



