Ophthalmia neonatorum : its etiology and prevention / by Sydney Stephenson.

  • Stephenson, Sydney.
Date:
[1903]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ophthalmia neonatorum : its etiology and prevention / by Sydney Stephenson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    . In my experience, the bacteriological diagnosis of gono- cocci offers no particular difficulties as regards secretion from the conjunctiva, whatever it may do in other parts of the body. I can hardly help thinking that there has been a little tendency to exaggeration in some quarters as to the difficulty of the differential diagnosis of these micro-organisms. The intra-cellular groups of numerous biscuit-shaped diplococci, which are readily decolourised by Gram, but which retain the basic aniline dyes with some tenacity, are very characteristic. The double stain- ing with pyronin and methyl green (Pappenheim) also yields excellent results. Indeed, cultures would not be necessary were it not for the fact that Hugland (f Klin. Monatsbl. f. Augenheilk./ 1900, Beilageheft, p. 72) has recently described a case of severe purulent ophthalmia in a boy of five months, in the pus from whose eyes he found intra-cellular diplococci,' which by means of cultures were shown to be the Diplococcus intracellular is meningitidis of Weichselbaum and Jaeger. Moreover, it is possible, although the author denies the fact, that the same microbe was observed by Krukenburg (f Klin. Monatsbl. f. Augen./ 1899, p. 271) in conjunctivitis, and called by him the pseudo-gonococcus. * Hence, in order to differentiate between the two microbes—the gonococcus and the meningococcus—it appears that we must inoculate agar-agar and incubate the tubes, when the former organism will not grow, while the latter will yield an abundant whitish cultivation. It must, however, be added that, so far as I am aware, the Diplococcus meningitidis has not yet been found in the ophthalmia of newly-born babies. The ophthalmia produced by organisms other than the gonococcus, generally speaking, agrees in the following points :—it is milder, has a shorter duration, and, except when due to the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, seldom affects the cornea. Thus, of thirty-eight of my gonorrheal cases, ' * C. Frankel (' Zeitschrift f. Hygiene u. Infectionskrankheiten/ 1899, Band xxxi) described in the same year three cases of pseudo-membranous conjunctivitis in children associated with the meningococcus.