262 
G. ED. LEECH. 
nervous influence, to heat, to plethora, to a contaminated atmo¬ 
sphere. For my own part, however much hereditariness or other 
causes may predispose the animal to take the disease, I cannot 
help thinking that many horses who now contract ophthalmia 
in stables would escape in situations in the open air; and that 
in stables we find the number of cases proportionately less accord¬ 
ing as the animal at the trying time of life (between 4 and 6 
years) is moderately fed and worked and kept in an uncontam¬ 
inated atmosphere. I believe that anything that will excite 
commotion in the system at this period is liable to affect the 
eyes, though the eye is not so liable to be affected as the mem¬ 
brane lining the air passages ; most young horses at this time 
of life, on being stabled, are sure to be afflicted with some ca¬ 
tarrhal or bronchitic trouble, as strangles, influenza, swollen 
limbs, diarrhoea, etc. I cannot, therefore, after viewing these 
cases from all sides, hesitate in pronouncing this disease consti¬ 
tutional and not local; not a single conjunctival inflammation, 
although the conjunctiva is a participant in it, but essentially 
and primarily a disease of the internal structure of the eye. 
Just how these structures become affected I cannot decidedly 
affirm, but only venture upon an opinion that the blood is the 
medium of contamination, which is only one opinion among 
many others just as deserving. 
The treatment for this disease is very unsatisfactary, and I 
will only say that the operation of tapping the aqueous cham¬ 
ber is recorded as early as 1841, and was the result of an acci¬ 
dent—recorded by Dr. Price, of Cork. 
Sympathetic Ophthalmia (“Diseases of the Eye,’ 5 by Norris 
and Oliver.) This case is reported by Deutschmann, and is of 
more than usual interest because the man died of carcinoma of 
the stomach. The changes found in the sympathizing eye, in 
the opinion of Deutschmann, must have been the result of a pro¬ 
cess that necessarily was limited to the visual apparatus from 
beginning to end. 
A man thirty years old had undergone an unsuccessful oper¬ 
ation upon his right eye six months before ; inflammation 
