525 
HYPOPIUM, THE EFFECT OF INTERNAL INFLAM¬ 
MATION OF THE EYE. 
By Mr. JOHN C. QUICK, V.S., Saint Ives, Cornwall. 
As the contributors to The Veterinarian have long remained 
silent on that scourge of the equine race, ophthalmia, I beg to offer 
a few remarks, which may not be altogether uninteresting to some 
of your readers. 
A circumstance has occurred in two cases which I have had 
lately under treatment for ophthalmia that I have never seen any 
notice taken of by previous writers on the subject, and which con¬ 
vinces me that the inflammation first takes place in the internal 
part of the eye, and not in the conjunctiva, as generally considered. 
Mr. Pritchard of Wolverhampton, in the fifth vol. of The Ve¬ 
terinarian, p. 380, says, “The periodical ophthalmia does not 
commence in the conjunctival membrane, as some have stated; it 
is an internal inflammation from the first.” I perfectly agree with 
him on that score; but the circumstance above alluded to, he, Mr. P., 
has probably not observed so distinctly marked as I did in the 
beforementioned cases, otherwise I think he would have taken 
more notice of it. I refer to decided hypopium, which Scarpa, 
speaking of the human eye, says is the “consequence of severe 
acute ophthalmia, particularly the internal species.” 
Where the inflammation was primarily in the conjunctiva, you 
will find the pupil contracted almost entirely, and having the ap¬ 
pearance of a small black streak on the iris. The corpora nigra, at 
the same time, are not to be seen, but, at the inferior portion of the 
pupillary margin towards the inner can thus, you will observe the 
coagulating lymph gravitating to the bottom of the anterior 
chamber of the eve. In one of the cases the inflammation was 
so intense, that the lymph was thrown out in such abundance as to 
conceal entirely the major part of the iris; but in the other case 
depletive measures were had recourse to at a much earlier period of 
the disease, consequently the hypopium was of much smaller di¬ 
mensions. The longer the acute stage is suffered to remain, the 
greater will be the extravasation and deposition of the coagulating 
lymph; but, as soon as it assumes the chronic form, or enters its 
second stage, the quantity of coagulating lymph forming the hypo¬ 
pium leaves off increasing, and from that instant is disposed to 
diminish. 
In the worst case, I had recourse in the second stage of the dis¬ 
order to the strong mercurial ointment and the hydriodate of 
potass, well and extensivclv rubbed around the eye, which had a 
VOL. XTII. I A 
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