384 BACTERIOLOGY OF THE EYE 



inflammation, healing after some weeks, was produced in the eye. The animals in 

 general remained healthy. 



Zur Nedden himself does not claim that there is any certain proof of the signi- 

 ficance of this bacillus. If we concede the possibility and the question is still open 

 that various organisms can produce a sympathetic ophthalmia, then this organism 

 can quite well be one of them. 



It can be taken as certain that this bacillus is not constant in sympathetic 

 ophthalmia. Brons was unable to find it in three fresh cases in my clinic, in spite 

 of the most careful repetition of Zur Nedden's tests. Neither did we obtain any 

 benefit from the serum treatment in sympathetic ophthalmia (injection of the serum 

 of a patient suffering from sympathetic ophthalmia), although we obtained large 

 quantities of blood at varying times. We could not convince ourselves that the 

 blood of sympathetic patients had any more severe effect on the eye of a rabbit 

 than the blood of a normal person. 



Zur Nedden's results show that here and there organisms of the group of the 

 pseudo-diphtheria bacillus occur, and can multiply and cause insidious inflammation 

 in the vitreous, not only when directly injected, but also by infection of the blood- 

 stream. These bacilli, when in the blood-stream, are unable to produce any 

 demonstrable changes in other parts of the body, a characteristic also possessed by 

 the still undiscovered cause of sympathetic ophthalmia (Romer and Ulbrich ; cf. the 

 literature of ' Saprophytic Inoculation' in section 'Wound Infection,' p. 191). 



It should be noted in this connexion that Schirmer produced an insidious irido- 

 cyclitis, without any organisms being demonstrable, by the introduction of pieces of 

 tissue from sympathetic exciting eyes into the vitreous of rabbits (Heidel. Congr., 

 1900, p. 189) . Eorner produced an irido-cyclitis (ibid., 1903, p. 38) with the virus 

 of foot-and-mouth disease and chicken-pox. Ronier produced in apes and in young 

 pigs an iridocyclitis, followed by a general infection. He considered that he had 

 here an experimental analogy with the still unknown virus of sympathetic 

 ophthalmia, though the manner of the transference and spread of these infections 

 could not be followed. 



