Angiogliosis Retinae with Report of Two Cases.

conjunctiva in any of the cases. The right preauricular gland was enlarged and tender. On admission, the temperature was normal, but rose to 1000 the following day, then fell to normal and did not rise again. He was treated by hot fomentations. On the third day-seventh day of disease-the preauricular gland was punctured with the usual precautions to avoid organismal contaminations. A needle on a syringe containing about half a cubic centimetre of broth was introduced, and the point of the needle moved about in the gland, slight positive and negative pressure being alternately exerted. The gland pulp thus obtained in broth was planted on blood agar, serum agar and Soparkar's medium (for composition see Indian JI. of Med. Research, Vol. VI, page 418), and yielded in all a pure culture of the diplobacillus of Morax and Axenfeld. This does not necessarily indicate that the other two cases were due to the same organism, and the reader may well wonder why the other cases were not investigated in the same way, or, why the preauricular gland was punctured rather than the lacrymal gland. The reason is that we did not take the aetiological problem seriously till the third case was well advanced. It occurred to us then, that there was a possibility of an epidemic of acute dacryoadenitis and by this time the preauricular gland was easier to deal with. It may be objected that even in the one case investigated it is not proven that the organism isolated from the preauricular gland was necessarily the aetiological agent of the dacryoadenitis. This is of course true and theoretically one might obtain such a common inhabitant of the conjunctiva as the MoraxAxenfeld bacillus, from an apparently normal preauricular gland, were it practicable to obtain gland pulp. There is however a reasonable probability that the cause of the dacryoadenitis in one case of the three-and possibly in all three cases-was the bacillus -of Morax-Axenfeld.