Plumbic Ocular Neuritis in Queensland Children.

THE title "ocular neuritis " was applied by me to ithe cases which form the subject matter of this paper in 1897,i because the term includes with the optic nerve the external ocular nerves, whereas "optic neuritis " would not include the latter. My 1897 paper diagnosed the cases, but failed satisfactorily to point out a source for the poison-even, in fact, suggested a source since proved to be erroneous, namely, tank water. My 9042 paper demonstrated the source of the poison, end this matter was further, elaborated in a paper read by me at the Seventh Australasian Medical Congress (1905) ,nd published in its Transactions. I am anxious that an account of the cases should have a wide circulation, not only because I think they throw more light on the special clinical manifestations of lead on the ocular nerves than has been recorded by others, but because they appear to constitute a type of ocular disease unknown in the medical literature of Europe. Isolated cases are likely Lo be regarded as basal meningitis or cerebral tumour. Our Brisbane cases were, in fact, diagnosed in the first instance as an unusual form of basal meningitis and described as such in the Transactions of the Third Intercolonial Medical Congress (1892) by A. Jefferis Turner. I then concurred. Since I ascertained in 1897 that they were really cases of lead neuritis, Turner has accepted.and supported that diagnosis. I am satisfied also that cases cannot be very infrequent