Corneal Opacities among Children of a Railway Colony in the Dekkan

Barsi Light Railway Co., Kurduwadi The high incidence of leucoma among the rural population of the Dekkan is a fact which, |n our opinion, has not yet received the attention it deserves. Yet, the casual observer in Bombay Presidency will notice with astonishment that in certain up-country stations there ls apparently hardly a single house where not at least one family member is afflicted by that disability. One may aptly describe the Dekkan or at least parts of it as a country of the one-eyed. This paper deals with corneal opacities among children, up to the age of 12 years, in a r?jilway colony of Sholapur district. The age limit was chosen, as it was impossible for ? to get reliable information as to the origin the trouble among adults who, as a rule, contracted the disability in early youth. In the ?f children, on the other hand, we have been able to get most of the necessary information ?rn our own records, as the case notes of all jailway employees and their dependants are being kept at our dispensaries. -The railway colony of Kurduwadi harbours '61 children from the 1st to the completed 12th y^ar of life. Among these children we recorded *0, who presented a corneal opacity as a result