Ophthalmia (also called ophthalmitis) is inflammation of the eye. It results in congestion of the eyeball, often eye-watering, redness and swelling, itching and burning, and a general feeling of irritation under the eyelids. Ophthalmia can have different causes, such as infection from bacteria, viruses, fungi, or may result from a physical trauma to the eye, chemical irritation, and allergies. A bacteria infection can result in a mucus and pus secretion.[1] Severe cases of ophthalmia can cause blindness if not treated, especially in newborns, who contract it from the environment in the womb.[2] Treatments vary according to the nature of the cause, with minor irritations going away on their own.
Aristodemus, a Spartan captain during the Second Persian invasion of Greece, was affected by ophthalmia and was thus unable to fight at the Battle of Thermopylae (of the famous Spartan 300). However, he fought bravely and died at the Battle of Plataea. Due to the ophthalmia, and his absence from the first battle, he was not buried with proper funeral rites of a Spartan captain.[4]
Cicero, on 1 March 49 BC wrote to Atticus that he had ophthalmia.[5]
Eratosthenes, who among other things was a Greek geographer and mathematician, contracted ophthalmia as he aged, becoming blind around 195 BC, depressing him and causing him to voluntarily starve himself to death. He died in 194BC at the age of 82.[6]
Hannibal's sight was lost in his right eye in 217 BC by what was likely ophthalmia. He lost the sight while crossing a swamp area on a four-day march through water early in his Italian campaign.[7]
King John of Bohemia, who died in battle in 1346 at age 50 after being blind for a decade, lost his sight to this general condition.
Christopher Columbus had ophthalmitis late in his life. Ophthalmitis was a common disease of sailors, possibly related to scurvy or poor nutrition. In the book Negro Builders and Heroes by Benjamin Brawley, in the chapter entitled "The Wake of the Slave-Ship", is a description of this condition affecting, on slave ships, sometimes the whole crew and captive slaves.
Elizabeth Blackwell, physician in the United States, lost an eye from purulent ophthalmia contracted from an infant with an eye infection, while working in Paris at La Maternité (1849), and after loss of the eye she could no longer be a surgeon.
The Spanish composer and guitar virtuoso Francisco Tárrega also had ophthalmia and seriously impaired sight after a traumatic childhood event (1850s).
Hugh Fortescue, aka Lord Ebrington, (1818-1905), British Liberal MP and sanitary reformer, contracted ophthalmia in the course of a visit in 1856 to a barracks whilst researching sanitary conditions in the army. He lost sight in one eye. [9]
Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of the American classic, Two Years Before the Mast (1840), developed "a weakness of the eyes" after contracting measles while a junior at Harvard College. In an attempt to cure his condition, he undertook a two-year sailing voyage to California from Boston via Cape Horn, which provided the experiences for his memoir. The cure worked.
Edward Rushton, 18th-century blind poet and slavery abolitionist, who founded the first blind school in the UK in 1776. He is believed to have caught ophthalmia while compassionately feeding slaves who had been isolated for it.[10]
Wild Bill Hickok, 1876, Hickok was diagnosed by a doctor in Kansas City, Missouri, at just 39, as his marksmanship and health were apparently in decline.
Notes
↑ "Ophthalmia". RETINA - Przychodnia i Szpital Okulistyczny (in Polish). Retrieved 2021-10-07.
Year 241 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Atticus and Cerco. The denomination 241 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye, is inflammation of the outermost layer of the white part of the eye and the inner surface of the eyelid. It makes the eye appear pink or reddish. Pain, burning, scratchiness, or itchiness may occur. The affected eye may have increased tears or be "stuck shut" in the morning. Swelling of the white part of the eye may also occur. Itching is more common in cases due to allergies. Conjunctivitis can affect one or both eyes.
Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. His work is comparable to what is now known as the study of geography, and he introduced some of the terminology still used today.
This article concerns the period 279 BC – 270 BC.
This article concerns the period 249 BC – 240 BC.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae, also known as gonococcus (singular) or gonococci (plural), is a species of Gram-negative diplococci bacteria isolated by Albert Neisser in 1879. It causes the sexually transmitted genitourinary infection gonorrhea as well as other forms of gonococcal disease including disseminated gonococcemia, septic arthritis, and gonococcal ophthalmia neonatorum.
Cyrene or Kyrene was an ancient Greek and later Roman city near present-day Shahhat, Libya. It was the most important of the five Greek cities in the region, known as the pentapolis. It gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica, which it has retained to modern times.
This is a partial list of human eye diseases and disorders.
Trachoma is an infectious disease caused by bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. The infection causes a roughening of the inner surface of the eyelids. This roughening can lead to pain in the eyes, breakdown of the outer surface or cornea of the eyes, and eventual blindness. Untreated, repeated trachoma infections can result in a form of permanent blindness when the eyelids turn inward.
Philopoemen was a skilled Greek general and statesman, who was Achaean strategos on eight occasions.
Aristodemus was a Spartan warrior, one of the 300 sent to the Battle of Thermopylae.
Enucleation is the removal of the eye that leaves the eye muscles and remaining orbital contents intact. This type of ocular surgery is indicated for a number of ocular tumors, in eyes that have sustained severe trauma, and in eyes that are otherwise blind and painful.
Sympathetic ophthalmia (SO), also called spared eye injury, is a diffuse granulomatous inflammation of the uveal layer of both eyes following trauma to one eye. It can leave the affected person completely blind. Symptoms may develop from days to several years after a penetrating eye injury. It typically results from a delayed hypersensitivity reaction.
Neonatal conjunctivitis is a form of conjunctivitis which affects newborn babies following birth. It is typically due to neonatal bacterial infection, although it can also be non-infectious. Infectious neonatal conjunctivitis is typically contracted during vaginal delivery from exposure to bacteria from the birth canal, most commonly Neisseria gonorrhoeae or Chlamydia trachomatis.
Argyrol is the trade name for an antiseptic for mucous membranes which consists of compounded solutions of mild silver protein. Argyrol is synonymous with the chemical Mild Silver Protein (MSP) which is pharmaceutical grade for use in medicine and sterile processes. MSP is a molecule produced in the chemical industry in Europe, consisting of elemental silver conjugated along the helix of a denatured protein molecule derived from caseinate of strictly regulated certified livestock. Argyrol 10% is 20,000 ppm with particle sizing molecular range from <8 nm to average <14.3 nm. Argyrol is a local anti-infective most familiar for both ophthalmic and upper respiratory disinfection. Widely publicized for its value to resolve gonorrhea infections, it was known to prevent gonorrheal blindness and other pathogenic bacterial and viral infections to the eyes of newborn infants. Albert C. Barnes developed and commercialized Argyrol as treatment and prevention technology.
Gonorrhoea or gonorrhea, colloquially known as the clap, is a sexually transmitted infection (STI) caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Infection may involve the genitals, mouth, or rectum. Infected men may experience pain or burning with urination, discharge from the penis, or testicular pain. Infected women may experience burning with urination, vaginal discharge, vaginal bleeding between periods, or pelvic pain. Complications in women include pelvic inflammatory disease and in men include inflammation of the epididymis. Many of those infected, however, have no symptoms. If untreated, gonorrhea can spread to joints or heart valves.
Equine recurrent uveitis (ERU) – also known as moon blindness, recurrent iridocyclitis, or periodic ophthalmia – is an acute, nongranulomatous inflammation of the uveal tract of the eye, occurring commonly in horses of all breeds, worldwide. The causative factor is not known, but several pathogeneses have been suggested. It is the most common cause of blindness in horses. In some breeds, a genetic factor may be involved.
Credé procedure is the practice of washing a newborn's eyes with a 2% silver nitrate solution to protect against neonatal conjunctivitis caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae.
Edward Rushton (1756–1814) was a British poet, writer and bookseller from Liverpool, England. He worked as a sailor aboard a slave ship as a young man, and became an abolitionist as a result. After losing his own vision, he opened a school for the blind, the oldest such school in continuous operation in the world.
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