Treatise on the Diseases of the Eye. 201 



" An effusion of serum or blood under the cunjunctiva may take 

 place from neglected chronic inflammation. In these cases the redness 

 is usually round the cornea. A much more common cause of the 

 effusion of blood is from violent exertion, as from coughing. Weak 

 native children are often so affected during the prevalence of epi- 

 demic hooping cough. In these cases the effusion often nearly covers 

 the whole of the anterior part of the sclerotic coat. In these cases 

 the effused blood is soon absorbed without the application of any 

 remedy." 



Dr. Wise alludes with justice to the commonness of puru- 

 lent ophthalmia neonatorum in this country, and to its fre- 

 quently destructive results ; but there is nothing new to be 

 said on the subject, as the ordinary treatment answers as well 

 here as at home. 



Epidemic purulent ophthalmia, to which all bodies of men 

 congregated together are liable, is a subject, to which the 

 attention of medical men has long been directed. Dr. Wise 

 discusses it at considerable length, as it used to occur in 

 the Lower Orphan School at Allipore; if he had treated 

 other subjects in equal detail, his work would have been 

 much more valuable than it is. On this subject Dr. Wise 

 arrives at the following conclusions : (p. 55.) 



" From a careful consideration of the subject, it appears that the 

 disease may occur epidemically among those pre-disposed to it, during 

 certain states of the atmosphere ; that it may be conveyed by in- 

 oculation, and under certain circumstances, as a want of proper 

 circulation in houses where numbers are congregated together, when 

 the purulent ophthalmia may even become infectious. 



This variety of ophthalmia is characterized by the usual peculi- 

 arities of epidemic diseases : such as its fluctuating nature, appearing 

 at certain seasons ; at first affecting a few, but in a severe form, and 

 becoming milder in its course as the disease spreads more generally 

 ! among a number of individuals collected together." 



The following extract will show the extent to which this 

 disease prevailed: (pp. 58 — 61, note.) 



2 D 



