Hop-pickers' ophthalmia / by Percy T. Adams.

  • Adams, Percy T.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hop-pickers' ophthalmia / by Percy T. Adams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    1/6 (page 275)
    F •my readers will have derived some small insight into the wonderful molecular mechanism which gives rise to the beautiful colours and crosses that are revealed by the microscope with the aid of polarised light. Ibop^lpictiere' ©pbtbalmia.* Abstract of a Paper by Percy T. Adams, M.R.C.S., D.P.H., Resident Med. Officer Kent County Ophthalmic Hospital. OR the past six years, during the latter part of August and throughout the month of September, cases of an acute '. form of ophthalmia have occurred in Kent among the hop operatives. A peculiarity of the disease lies in the apparent imniunity of men; women and children are more intimately associated with the actual handling of the hop-cones in plucking them from|the bine. Men engaged in the hop industry are, however, subject to the disorder. The disease is associated with no particular planta- tion, growth of hops, encampment, or village. It is mostly prevalent at the time of the maturity of the catkins only, and does not appear to be infectious. All, whether home-pickers or strangers, appear to suffer equally from the disorder, which appears to partake of a partly mechanical origin. In two cases which came under the writer's notice, the patients positively affirmed that the advent of their symptoms followed shortly after an accidental rubbing of their eyes with hop-soiled hands. I made observations of the operatives whilst actually engaged in hop-picking, and noticed that the women, whilst bend- ing over the bines, frequently applied their hands to their foreheads to brush aside the hair from the face. A woman with a much- inflamed eye who came to the hospital maintained that it came on shortly after rubbing some of the stuff from the hops into her eyes from her hands. Patients complain of an acute smarting pain, which becomes * From British Medical Journal, May 13, i893- 0f 'hanks are due to the Editor for kindly lendingTFe electros.