SYMPATHETIC OPHTHALMIA

Abstract

THERE are certain diseases in all fields of medicine whose essential data have come to be more or less taken for granted. Sympathetic ophthalmia is one of these. Its existence, as Woods¹ pointed out in an excellent review of the whole subject, has been realized for almost a thousand years. Its clinical aspects were very well described more than 100 years ago. The pathologic changes in the exciting eye were set forth in considerable detail almost 50 years ago. The potentially devastating character of the disease is thoroughly appreciated by any ophthalmologist who has ever encountered it in his practice. No really satisfactory treatment for it has ever been devised. A recent experience of our own, in which the histologic picture was at complete variance with the classic clinical picture of sympathetic ophthalmia which the patient presented, has made us wonder whether it would not be well to examine